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Pantheistic Dilemma! 

and 

Other Essays in Philosophy 
and Religion 



BY 

HENRY C. SHELDON 

Professor in Boston University 




THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 






Copyright, 1920, by 
HENRY C. SHELDON 



©CLA5-66983 

I 



TO STUDENTS 

WHOM I HAVE HAD THE PRIVILEGE 

OP INSTRUCTING 

IN THE SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY 

OF BOSTON UNIVERSITY 

THIS VOLUME 

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 



CONTENTS 



ESSAY 



PAQB 

I. Pantheistic Dilemmas 11 

II. A Study in the Philosophy Styled 

Pragmatism 37 

III. Prominent Features in the Philoso- 

phy of Henri Bergson 67 

IV. The Notion of a Changing God 105 

V. Attempts to Dispense with the Soul 119 

VI. Doctrinal Values Contributed by 

the Reformation 145 

VII. John Henry Newman as Roman Cath- 
olic Apologist 187 

VIII. The Truth and the Error of Mysti- 
cism 221 

IX. Bahaism Historically and Critically 

Considered 273 

Index 353 



PREFACE 

Most of the themes considered in this vol- 
ume are associated with important issues in the 
intellectual and religious world of to-day. 
Bahaism may appear to be an exception, but 
it has a measure of interest as being a most 
ambitious scheme of religious syncretism which 
has found adherents and propagators in this 
country. It affords, moreover, a natural occa- 
sion to test the claims of the Mohammedanism 
from which it originated and to which it ac- 
cords a certain preference among religious ante- 
cedents. 

In the composition of the essays the aim 
has been twofold: on the one hand exposition, 
and on the other criticism or valuation. The 
author would express the hope that the former 
aim has been executed with such fairness that 
even the reader who is not in full sympathy 
with the manner in which the second aim is 
fulfilled in some instances may still find not a 
little which is suited to command his approval. 






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ESSAY I 
PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 



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ESSAY I 

PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

If it be any true interest, any demand of a 
rational system, to conserve reality both to 
God and to man, both to the Supreme Spirit 
and to human souls, then pantheism is justly 
barred from acceptance. An insuperable di- 
lemma confronts it, in that it must sacrifice 
God in his proper character if it retains man 
in his full reality, and must sacrifice man as he 
is known in consciousness if it will insist upon 
a God defined as absolutely all-inclusive. In 
saying this much we do not mean to imply 
that pantheism must make a decisive choice 
between just two alternatives. While it is im- 
possible for it to achieve both of the speci- 
fied ends, it is quite conceivable that by its 
definitions and reasonings it should at once 
sacrifice each of them very largely. Within a 
given system it can blur, mutilate, and in part 
abolish the proper reality of both God and 
man. And it is just to this result that it more 
commonly gravitates. 

The fundamental thesis of pantheism is the 
absolute oneness of being. If this being, over 
against which there is no second, be called God, 

13 



14 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

then the pantheistic affirmation is that God 
is the sole entity, the all-inclusive reality. It 
follows that what are called finite beings, 
bodies and souls, either have only an imag- 
inary existence or else are to be rated as liter- 
ally modes of God, forms into which the sole- 
existing substance is somehow differentiated. 
In a crude type of pantheism they might be 
called parts of God; but pantheistic speculators 
distinguished by any considerable degree of 
caution or subtlety generally feel the need of 
guarding against the notion that God is sub- 
ject to division or is to be construed as an 
aggregate. They prefer, therefore, to speak of 
bodies and souls, so far as they concede to 
them any reality, as modes or limited expres- 
sions of the one absolute Being or of his attri- 
butes. This has a certain verbal advantage, 
though a very serious demand still remains 
for showing how finite modes are compatible 
with an infinite subject. The general assump- 
tion is that a relation of commensurability 
must exist between modes and their subject. 

A word needs to be added relative to that 
form of speculation which denies all reality 
to the universe — viewed as the sphere of the 
manifold, the individual, and the finite — 
rating it in its entirety as nothing else than 
an empty deceiving appearance. Some writers 



■/ 



PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 15 

have been inclined to deny the propriety of 
including this way of thinking under panthe- 
ism, preferring to classify it as a species of 
monistic idealism. But the exception seems to 
us destitute of any good basis. No less than 
those who style finite entities modes of God 
those who deny the reality of the finite construe 
God as the sole Being. Their system is most 
unmistakably a pan-theism, only it happens to 
be of an acosmistic or world-denying type. 

In the major elaborations of pantheistic 
theory some variety of interest has generally 
obtained. Those who have taken the theme 
in hand have not consulted exclusively the 
demands of speculative thinking. Either they 
have not wished or have not been able to 
put aside all the ancestral forms of representa- 
tion. In certain connections they have prac- 
ticed a species of accommodation, adopting 
what has been styled the exoteric form of 
discourse as opposed to the purely philosophic 
or esoteric form. This remark unquestionably 
applies to the most distinguished exponent of 
Oriental pantheism, to Sankara (otherwise 
Sankarakarya), the great oracle of the or- 
thodox Vedanta philosophy. In the view of 
some very earnest students it applies also to 
the most noted representative of Occidental 
pantheism, Spinoza. In our discussion we pur- 



16 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

pose to deal in particular with the views of 
these two writers, believing that in so doing 
we shall cover the points of principal sig- 
nificance in our theme. 

Sankara of India, who is supposed to have 
written in the ninth Christian century, rivals 
the most emphatic of pantheistic writers in 
his endeavor to exclude all limitation and 
multiplicity from God, or the absolute Being, 
whom he commonly designates by the name 
Brahman, but also characterizes as the Self. 
Of this Being he affirms, "Simple nondifferen- 
tiated intelligence constitutes its nature; just 
as a lump of salt has inside as well as outside 
one and the same saltish taste, nor any other 
taste." 1 For it there is no distinction of exist- 
ence and thought. 2 It cannot be viewed as 
a substratum for any quality. In fact it is 
totally without attributes, 3 and totally ex- 
clusive of relations, so that it can neither be 
consistently regarded as a subject for self- 
consciousness nor operative as a cause. 4 Brah- 
man, it is true, is described by different 
categories, such as absolute existence, absolute 

1 Commentary on the Vedanta Sutras, in Sacred Books 
of the East, Oxford edition, vol. xxxviii, p. 157. 

2 Ibid., p. 166. 

3 In Sacred Books of the^ East, vol. xxxiv, p. 327, xxxviii, 
pp. 202, 203. 

4 Ibid., vol. xxxiv, pp. 330, 357. 



\> 






PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 17 

knowledge, and absolute blessedness; but, as a 
modern Vedantist explains, these terms have 
no qualitative reference; they stand for essence 
and the three are one intrinsically, though 
diversified to our point of view. 5 How thor- 
oughly Sankara abolishes all inner distinctions 
in the Absolute may be judged by this state- 
ment from the pen of another expositor: 
"Brahman may, from a lower standpoint, be 
conceived as 'with attributes,' but the ultimate 
truth remains that he is really without at- 
tributes. Besides, the conception of the Abso- 
lute in the strict sense leaves hardly any 
room for attributes. Impose any attributes 
and you at once make the Absolute non-abso- 
lute, that is, destroy its very nature by making 
limited that which is without limits." 6 

In sustaining his contention that the dis- 
tinctionless Brahman is being in its totality 
Sankara adopts the bold expedient of denying 
the real existence of the world. All distinct 
selves or souls, as well as all bodily forms, are 
declared to belong to the sphere of Maya or 
illusion. They are but dreamlike products 
resulting from nescience. The following state- 



6 Swami Vivekananda, The Science and Philosophy of 
Religion, p. 82. 

6 Prahu Dutt Shastri, The Doctrine of Maya in the Philos- 
ophy of the Vedanta, p. 129. 



18 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

merits will indicate how unequivocally the 
Vedantist philosopher applied this point of 
view: "During the subsistence of the world 
the phenomenon of multifarious distinct ex- 
istence, based on wrong knowledge, proceeds 
unimpeded like the vision of a dream, although 
there is only one highest Self devoid of all 
distinction." "Scriptural passages declare that 
for him who sees that everything has its self 
in Brahman the whole phenomenal world, with 
its actions, agents, and results, is non-existent." 
"All the adherents of the Vedanta must admit 
that the • difference of the soul and the highest 
Self is not real, but is due to the limiting 
adjuncts, namely, the body and so on, which 
are the product of name and form as presented 
by nescience." 7 As is logically dictated by 
these propositions, Sankara affirms that the 
individual soul attains to its true goal by 
passing beyond all sense of individuality and 
coming to actualize the truth of its identity 
with Brahman. Thus the false notion of 
concrete and plural existence will be effectually 
vanquished. Modern expositors of Vedantism, 
like Vivekananda and Shastri, differ here in 
no respect from Sankara. 

The above presents in its cardinal features 

7 In Sacred Books of the East, vol. xxxiv, pp. 318, 323, 
281, 282. 



PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 19 

the real system of the noted Hindu thinker. 
But, as was indicated, he was constrained in 
various connections to practice accommoda- 
tion. Conforming to the style of representa- 
tion frequently occurring in the ancient oracles 
of his religion and practically requisite to 
satisfy the religious needs of the people in 
general, he sometimes spoke of Brahman as 
if he were actually the creator of the world 
and held a real relation to men and things. 
His fundamental conviction, however, is in no 
wise ambiguous. The Brahman who fashions 
and dwells in the world, to whom he some- 
times refers as the lower Brahman 8 — other- 
wise denominated Isvara — is plainly nothing 
more than a makeshift conception. He 
is simply a phantom of the religious imagi- 
nation which fulfills a certain utilitarian func- 
tion. 

Judged by certain lines of statement Spinoza 
represents a type of pantheism not a little 
in contrast with that of Sankara. While he 
agrees with the Hindu thinker in affirming 
one sole-existing substance, he does not define 
this as totally void of attributes. On the 
contrary, he assigns to it an infinity of at- 
tributes, though he specifies only two — thought 
and extension. But, in spite of this fact, he 

8 Ibid., vol. xxxiv, p. 61; vol. xxxviil, pp. 203, 390. 



20 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

gives place to a series of statements which 
argue for a distinctionless Absolute very much 
like that of Sankara. His maxim that "all 
determination is negation" 9 suggests that the 
Absolute is not to be qualified by any pred- 
icates. Again he makes the explicit declaration 
that God is a "Being absolutely indetermin- 
ate." 10 Furthermore, commenting on terms 
applied to God by certain writers, he squarely 
denies that such characteristics as omniscience 
and wisdom can appropriately be ascribed to 
him. 11 With equal resoluteness he rules out 
intellect and will from the eternal essence of 
God, affirming that what is in God has no 
more correspondence with these terms as 
applied to human endowments than the heav- 
enly constellation styled the Dog has with 
a barking animal. 12 Thus, notwithstanding his 
formal affirmation of attributes, Spinoza is 
seen to lean conspicuously toward the theory 
of an indeterminate or distinctionless Absolute. 
The posited attributes are brought under sus- 
picion of describing nothing really pertaining 
to God as the absolute Being. 

A second apparent contrast between Spinoza 



9 Epist. 50. 10 Epist. 41, otherwise 36. 

11 Short Treatise, cited by E. E. Powell, Spinoza and Re- 
ligion, pp. 202, 203. 

12 Ethics, Part I, prop. 17, scholium. See also Epist. 36. 



.«? 



PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 21 

and Sankara relates to the reality of the world, 
the aggregate of limited or finite beings. That 
the former meant in all seriousness to affirm 
such reality is not to be doubted. Still, it 
cannot well be denied that he laid down 
premises which logically blocked the road to 
the given affirmation. In so far as he postu- 
lated an absolutely indeterminate Being he 
provided no competent basis or background 
for a manifold world. Such a Being is barren 
of all power of production, and could not be 
a subject for any differentiation without con- 
tradicting its nature. Furthermore, what he 
says of God's infinite attributes may be re- 
garded as excluding the possibility of the 
origination of the finite beings which he char- 
acterizes as modes of those attributes — modes 
of thought and extension; for, he makes this 
unequivocal affirmation: "All things which 
follow from the absolute nature of any attribute 
of God must always exist and be infinite; or, 
in other words are eternal and infinite through 
the said attribute." 13 Now, according to 
Spinoza, there is nothing contingent in the 
universe. Whatever follows from anything 
follows by necessity. What place is there, 
then, for the finite, if the attributes of God 
can only give rise to the infinite? The philos- 

"Ibid.. Part I, prop. 21. 



22 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

opher, it is true, predicates an unlimited 
series of finite things, one thing conditioning 
another, and so on to infinity. But the addi- 
tion of one finite thing to another never results 
in a true infinite. Hence it is only by a tour 
de force that Spinoza can bring in the finite, 
and he falls little short of confessing the vio- 
lent shift when he says: "The finite must 
follow from some attribute of God, in so far 
as the said attribute is considered in some 
way modified." 14 The relevant question is, 
What is to modify the infinite attribute which 
necessarily operates to produce only the in- 
finite? Surely, not finite things, usurping the 
field and counteracting the intrinsic demands 
of the infinite. Nowhere do we find the 
modification relieved of its enigmatic appear- 
ance. The phrases "in so far as" and "in 
some way" rather evade than satisfy the 
demand for explanation. They are quite 
unsuitable in a system which professes to leave 
nothing at loose ends. 15 Thus, though his 
intention was in a quite different direction, 
Spinoza provided certain foundations for the 
doctrine of the illusory character of the world 
proclaimed by the Vedantist philosophy. 



"Ethics, Part I, prop. 28, dem. 

1B Compare Powell, Spinoza and Religion, pp. 180, 141; 
John Caird, Spinoza, pp. 165, 166. 



PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 23 

In criticizing these forms of pantheism we 
may properly consider their shortcomings, on 
the one hand, from the standpoint of rational 
or metaphysical demands, and, on the other, 
from the viewpoint of religious and ethical 
requirements. 

Sankara's assumption of an indeterminate 
Absolute may in a way justify his negation of 
the world, since the perfectly indeterminate 
affords logically no basis for the production 
or evolution of anything. But the world is 
here, and this tremendous fact is not to be 
disposed of by any easygoing theoretical ex- 
pedient. The warrant for calling it an empty 
mirage, a dream, an illusion is in no wise 
apparent. What test of the illusory can the 
illusory itself apply? Now, the mind of the 
individual man is, according to the Vedantist 
theory, just as much of an illusion as is any- 
thing in the world that can be named. When 
the philosopher, therefore, pronounces the 
world an illusion, if he speaks as an individual, 
it is a case of a nonentity pronouncing judg- 
ment. Obviously, a judgment of that kind 
is a mere burlesque, just a section of the whole 
deceptive phantasm in which the universe 
consists. On the other hand, if the philosopher 
assumes not to speak as an individual, what 
proof can he offer that he has transcended the 



&. 



A 



24 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

character and status of an individual, and is 
qualified to give forth a message as one who 
has actually experienced the truth that the 
distinctionless Brahman alone exists? That 
would involve both the slipping out of the 
state of apparent individuality into oneness 
with the distinctionless Brahman and the 
slipping back into the state of apparent indi- 
viduality. The second transition would be 
required as a logical prerequisite to serving as 
a witness. The distinctionless Brahman would 
have neither motive nor ability to serve as a 
witness to the ghostly unrealities that figure 
as individual men. So the philosopher must 
come back into his phantom state, and his 
message on identity with Brahman becomes a 
message of a phantom to fellow-phantoms, a 
message by the very conditions incapable of 
establishing anything. It can be urged, doubt- 
less, that he might carry back from the expe- 
rience in which he transcended the sense of 
individuality an impression of identity with the 
sole-existing Self. Suppose this, however, to be 
granted, what basis of rational confidence has 
been gained? What is the impression of an 
individual, or of a few individuals, derived 
through trancelike, or otherwise peculiar, expe- 
riences, and sought after with an intensity of 
zeal involving serious exposure to self-hypno- 



PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 25 

tism — what is such an impression worth as 
compared with the insistent overwhelming im- 
pression of men generally as to the real existence 
of individuals and of the world theater upon 
which they must of necessity move and act? 
If the dream hypothesis is to be applied, the 
ground for applying it to the fancied discovery 
of identity with Brahman, as against the 
opposed theory of real individuals and a real 
world, is as a thousand to one. 

Another baffling difficulty confronts the 
Vedanta pantheism. When asked for an ex- 
planation of the illusory world, the vast sphere 
of deceptive appearances, its advocates fail to 
give a satisfactory reply. They cannot tell 
how, over against the indeterminate distinc- 
tionless Absolute, the world phantom, with all 
its lying appearance of individuality and man- 
ifoldness, got onto the field. Sometimes they 
excuse themselves from all obligation to at- 
tempt an explanation. Thus the modern 
Vedantists, whom we have cited, inform us 
that the law of causality applies only within 
the sphere of appearances, that it is entirely 
foreign to the transcendent sphere of absolute 
being, and therefore it is impertinent to ask 
for any explanation of the world of deceitful 
appearances. This may be a very convenient 
makeshift; but it does not serve to commend 



26 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

the philosophy in behalf of which it is offered. 
It justifies the conclusion that in the absolute 
sphere there is no safeguard against the in- 
trusion of a measureless freak. Either Brah- 
man must be powerless to exclude the phantom 
world which proclaims a constant he against 
the truth of his sole existence, or he must 
wish that it should be on hand and serve as 
an instrument of falsehood. In the one case 
a dualism is affirmed which denies the funda- 
mental assumption of the Vedanta system, and 
in the other a self-contradiction is imputed 
to the absolute Being which cancels the idea 
of his perfection. In short, the Vedanta 
pantheism encounters rational objections that 
are plainly insuperable. 

Against Spinoza's system it can also be 
shown that it is far from being invulnerable 
in a rational or metaphysical point of view. 
In respect of method it is chargeable with 
arbitrariness. Easygoing assumption is a dis- 
tinguishing characteristic. Proceeding from the 
maxim that a clear idea is self-evidencing, 
Spinoza starts with the idea of substance as 
being of this nature, and by a purely deductive 
process attempts to draw out the whole sys- 
tem of reality. The achievement is a long way 
from corresponding to the ambitious attempt. 
From the mere idea of substance there is no 



PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 27 

available pathway to the actual. In reaching 
that goal Spinoza does not travel by the way 
he assumes to pursue. For example, the 
attributes thought and extension, which he 
makes descriptive of reality, are not derived 
by him from the idea of substance. They are 
manifestly imported from the empirical realm, 
the one from the inner domain of consciousness, 
and the other from the domain of experience 
through the senses. From the indeterminate 
Absolute, which, it has been seen, he assumed 
in at least some connections, he could not and 
did not get away by a straightforward method. 
Remark has already been made on the con- 
fusion which attaches to Spinoza's exposition 
of finite things as respects their essential rela- 
tions. He derives them from the infinite 
attributes of God, while yet he affirms that 
the infinite attributes can properly give origin 
only to the infinite. A question may also be 
raised as to whether the definition of finite 
things as modes or modifications of the divine 
attributes 16 is altogether agreeable to the 
requirements of strict philosophical discourse. 
In the sphere of reality modes hold relation 
to a subject rather than to the attributes of a 
subject. If we are to speak of them as modes 
of an attribute it is only in the sense that they 

ls Ethics, Part I, prop. 25, coroll. 






28 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

qualify the subject in a particular point of 
view. 

We find Spinoza expressing the judgment 
that the idea of partition or possible subdi- 
vision is foreign to the infinite. It is in no 
wise made up of parts. 17 Nevertheless he 
records this plain declaration: "The human 
mind is part of the infinite intellect of God" 18 
He also says, "The intellectual love of the 
mind toward God is part of the infinite love 
wherewith God loves himself." 19 Thus he 
crosses his own path in construing the relation 
of the finite to the infinite. 

Another item in Spinoza's system calls for 
adverse comment. In one connection he re- 
pudiates the notion that man necessarily exists 
as being an absurdity. 20 On the other hand, 
as will be more fully shown further on, he 
affirms that God acts by the sole necessity of 
his nature. The inevitable inference is that 
whatever exists, since nothing can exist apart 
from God's action, is grounded in absolute 
necessity. It looks as though Spinoza at this 
point had inadvertently lapsed into the the- 
istic conception of a free Creator. Each finite 
thing, it is true, according to the view of 



17 Ethics, Part I, prop. 13; also prop. 15, scholium. 

u Ibid., Part II, prop. 11, coroll. 

19 Ibid., Part V, prop. 36. 20 Ibid., Part II, prop. 10. 



PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 29 

Spinoza, is conditioned by its antecedent, and 
in this respect is contrasted with God. But 
as no antecedent is in the least degree con- 
tingent, a necessity as unqualified as the very 
being of God must be regarded as running 
through the whole line of finite things. 

That the system of Spinoza has been built 
up with a good degree of ingenuity and is 
capable of impressing the reviewer by its 
architectonic character may be admitted. But 
judged by any normal philosophical criterion, 
it affords only a dubious foundation for pan- 
theistic theory. Aside from phases of self- 
contradiction it moves too exclusively in the 
region of abstractions to afford any trust- 
worthy ground for conviction respecting the 
actual. 

It remains to apply the religious and ethical 
tests to the systems which have been con- 
sidered. That in their premises and logical 
implications they leave no place for religion, 
as commonly understood, is perfectly evident. 
They cancel the relationships which religion in 
that sense always recognizes. As Professor 
Bowne has remarked, "Religion demands the 
mutual otherness of the finite and the infinite 
in order that the relation of love and obedience 
may obtain." 21 

21 Personalism, p. 284. 



30 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

In any pantheistic scheme the mutual other- 
ness of the finite and the infinite is given no 
place except by an illogical makeshift. Ve- 
dantism excludes it by its most fundamental 
proposition, namely, the affirmation of the 
proper identity of the so-called individual self 
with Brahman, or the one true and really 
existent Self. Following its instructions, the 
religious man is bound to consider the anni- 
hilation of any and every sort of relationship, 
through identity with the distinctionless Brah- 
man, as the ideal goal. Meanwhile the great 
task is to purge his mind of the fiction that 
existence pertains to himself or to anything 
else as individual. If in the fulfillment of this 
task he pays any tribute to a higher power, or 
seeks aid therefrom, he simply associates him- 
self with that which his philosophy pronounces 
an empty illusion. To call upon Brahman 
would be sheer nonsense, for Brahman recog- 
nizes no object, and, besides, the man himself 
is as good as Brahman, is in fact, unqualifiedly 
Brahman, if he would only recognize the truth. 
As for his sins it is a perfect anomaly to enter- 
tain any religious concern for them. They are 
all in the sphere of Maya, the realm of de- 
ceptive appearances. 22 In that sphere, too, if 

22 Vivekananda, The Science and Philosophy of Religion, 
pp. 57, 100, 101, 105. 



A 



PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 31 

we may trust a recent exposition of Vedantism 
by a zealous champion, everything is strictly 
determined; not a shred of freedom exists. 23 
Man attains to freedom only in genuine knowl- 
edge of his identity with Brahman, and on the 
plane of that experience he is quite above 
the antithesis between virtue and vice. 24 So 
it would seem that he has no occasion to 
reckon himself a moral subject at any stage 
of his career, since in the sphere of Maya he 
is under compulsion to do exactly as he does, 
and outside of that sphere he is exempt from 
all law and obligation. 

The fact that religion and morals are found 
capable of surviving under such a system is 
not due to the merits of the system, but rather 
to man's innate religiousness and the persistent 
demands of his ethical consciousness. Disci- 
ples of the Vedanta pantheism cannot escape 
the working of these potent sources of influ- 
ence, and are compelled very largely to take 
religion and morals in that exoteric or accom- 
modated sense which is necessarily repudiated 
in any strict construction of their philosophy. 



23 Ibid., pp. Ill, 112. We have not noticed that Sankara 
emphasizes this point, but it is quite certain that Vivekananda 
designs to figure as an orthodox Vedantist. 

24 Vivekananda, The Vedanta Philosophy. An Address at 
Harvard University, p. 23. 



32 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

As for the great mass of the people of India, 
whatever may be their formal position, they 
practically ignore the characteristic postulates 
of the Vedanta system. 

The system of Spinoza, strictly construed, 
leaves no place for a sense of fellowship or 
practical relationship with God. What incen- 
tive can there be to approach, or to have 
any dealing with a God who is declared to 
possess neither intellect nor will, 25 and who 
entertains no designs in connection with the 
universe, final causes being "mere human fig- 
ments"? 26 As for love, the philosopher, it is 
true, speaks in terms of the "intellectual love" 
of God as exercised toward men. 27 But what 
kind of a love can he mean to denote? The 
very phrase intellectual love is strangely inap- 
propriate to a Being to whom intellect is de- 
nied. 28 Then, too, the God whom he depicts, 
as has just been observed, is without will. 
More than that he is void of emotion as under- 
stood by us. Pleasure and pain are foreign 
to him, 29 neither can it be said that he desires 
aught of any man, or that anything is pleasing 

2B Ethics, Part I, prop. 17, scholium; prop. 32, coroll. 1. 
26 Ibid., Part I, appendix; Part IV, pref. 
"Ibid., Part V, prop. 36. 

28 Kuno Fischer, Geschichte der Neueren Philosophic, vol. 
i, p. 563. 

»Ethics, Part V, prop. 17. 



PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 33 

or displeasing to him. 30 We submit that it 
must be a very particular kind of love which 
is exercised by a will-less, emotionless Being. 
To all human apprehension it must appear 
colder than a moonbeam, and might just as 
well be called by any other name so far as invit- 
ing to confidence and fellowship is concerned. 

The moral indifference characteristic of God 
in this system is not the least ground of chal- 
lenge. Not only is he neither pleased nor 
displeased with anything, but he is no less 
the author of evil than of good. He acts by 
the sole necessity of his nature, having no 
option as to the manner or order in which 
he brings things into existence, 31 and leaving 
no option whatever to any rank of creatures. 
"Nothing in the universe is contingent, but 
all things are conditioned to exist and operate 
in a particular manner by the necessity of the 
divine nature." 32 It follows that what is most 
vile and criminal in the judgment of men, in 
so far as it actually occurs, is based in the 
nature of God; that to ascribe a moral charac- 
ter to him is meaningless; that man at his 
best is nothing more than a spiritual autom- 
aton to whom no responsibility can rationally 
be imputed. 

30 Epist. 36. 31 Ethics, Part I, prop. 33. 

32 Ibid., Part I, prop. 29. 



34 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

How do pantheists justify the necessitation 
of moral evil which is involved in their scheme? 
Let one of their number testify. "From the 
point of view of pantheism," he says, "all 
change, evolution, progress, retrogression, sin, 
pain, or any other good or evil is local, finite, 
partial, while the infinite coordination of such 
infinitesimal movements makes one eternal 
peace." 33 The peace noted in the citation 
doubtless is to be identified with the peace 
of the all-inclusive Being, in other words with 
the peace of God. But is that a worthy con- 
ception of God which builds up his peace on 
the given basis? Does it not, in fact, assimilate 
his character altogether too much to that of 
a supreme devil to suppose that the sinking 
of the Lusitania and a thousand other atroc- 
ities perpetrated in the recent world war were 
necessary or contributory to his peace? Plainly, 
a God who is either indifferent to such evils 
or has his bliss enhanced by them is not truly 
a moral being. To invest moral evils with 
ability to increase the sum of the good and 
the perfect in the universe is to negate them 
as evils and to falsify the spontaneous and 
persistent testimony of man's moral intelligence. 

The claim of pantheism to be favorable to 

33 J. A. Picton, Pantheism, Its Story and Significance, 
pp. 32, 33. 



> 



PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 35 

religious sentiment on the ground of its great 
emphasis on the divine immanence ought not 
to deceive anyone. Undoubtedly, the convic- 
tion that God is near helps to foster that 
sentiment. But a nearness which passes over 
into identity, which cancels the sense of per- 
sonal relationships, which obliterates the mu- 
tual otherness of the finite and the infinite, 
must in the long run rather paralyze than 
vitalize religious feeling. Quite possibly the 
sentimentalist may find a passing gratification 
in the thought of a Deity who sleeps in the 
plant, dreams in the animal, and awakens in 
man. But well-poised reflective piety cannot 
rest satisfied with a God who is sunk in slum- 
ber, or wanders in the vagaries of dreams, or 
has no better knowledge of himself than is 
contained in the fragmentary and contradictory 
thoughts of men about him. That sort of near- 
ness truly interpreted means nothing better 
than remoteness and indifference. To secure 
the most healthful and efficient emphasis on 
the divine immanence it is only necessary to 
have recourse to a wisely constructed theism. 

The effect of pantheism in negating or 
radically obscuring the personality of God is 
an injury to religion for which, so far as we 
can discover, it offers no real compensation. 
Its attempt to cover up the injury by speak- 



36 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

ing of God as the suprapersonal does not 
mend the matter. Personality, as including 
self-consciousness and self-determination, is the 
highest category that can be named. There- 
fore to deny personality to God is practically 
to assimilate him to the infrapersonal. From 
this lowered conception no escape can be made 
by the use of any such fanciful and arbitrary 
epithet as "suprapersonal.'* 



ESSAY II 

A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY 
STYLED PRAGMATISM 



ESSAY II 

A STUDY IN THE PHILOSOPHY 
STYLED PRAGMATISM 

Some years ago an American professor re- 
marked that he had discovered thirteen varie- 
ties of pragmatism. This makes a rather be- 
wildering list, but it seems not to be exhaustive, 
since some pragmatists disclaim adherence to 
any one of the specified varieties. 

The responsibility for introducing the term 
"pragmatism" into the philosophical vocab- 
ulary seems to be chargeable to Charles S. 
Pierce, who in 1878 employed it to designate 
a method for making our ideas clear. As used 
by him it stood for a much less radical de- 
parture in philosophical theory than it has 
come to denote in recent years. 1 

Forbearing any attempt to distinguish and 
to characterize all the types of pragmatism, 
we purpose to take account mainly of the 
views of three representatives of the new 
philosophy, namely, William James, F. C. S. 
Schiller, and John Dewey, the first named 
having been connected with Harvard Univer- 
sity, the second with Oxford, and the third 

iHibbert Journal, October, 1908, pp. Ill, 112. 



40 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

with the University of Chicago and later with 
Columbia University. It is our conviction that 
in the writings of these three men, together 
with those of their disciples who substantially 
agree with them, we find about all that is 
significant in pragmatism as a peculiar and 
innovating system. 

The tenor of thinking on the part of these 
three representatives cannot be said to be 
identical. James was less of a stickler for a 
closed system, exhibited more hospitality for 
antecedent thought in religious and theolog- 
ical lines, than has been characteristic of 
Dewey and his school; he was more compre- 
hensive and less consistent. Schiller has ex- 
pressed, at least in some connections, a larger 
appreciation of the office of metaphysics than 
can be credited to either James or Dewey. 

Leading champions of pragmatism have been 
disposed to claim a large degree of originality 
for their scheme. They concede, however, 
that some approaches to it were made in 
former times. Professor James recognizes that 
contributions were furnished by Socrates, Aris- 
totle, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. "But these 
forerunners of pragmatism used it in frag- 
ments: they were a prelude only. Not until 
in our time has it generalized itself, become 
conscious of a universal mission, pretended to 



PRAGMATISM 41 

a conquering destiny." 2 Schiller, who prefers 
the title of humanism to that of "pragmatism," 
finds in particular a forerunner in Protag- 
oras. "Our only hope of understanding knowl- 
edge," he says, "our only chance of keeping 
philosophy alive by nourishing it with the 
realities of life, lies in going back from Plato 
to Protagoras, and ceasing to misunderstand the 
great teacher who discovered the measure of 
man's universe." 3 

In attempting to define pragmatism we 
may notice, as a general feature, its pronounced 
affiliation with evolution theory. It might be 
said to have come upon the stage as a kind of 
philosophical annex to Darwinism. The static 
and the fixed it is strongly inclined to repudiate 
as alien to reality. The all-inclusive flux of 
Heraclitus lies much nearer to its way of 
thinking than the eternal and unchanging 
ideas affirmed by Plato. Not all the schools, 
however, are equally dogmatic on this 
point. 

Coming to enumerate the more specific 
features of pragmatism, we begin with its 
attitude toward metaphysics. That a strain of 
disparagement enters into this attitude is quite 
clearly evidenced by the pronounced hostility 

2 Pragmatism, p. 50; Longmans, Green & Co., New York. 

3 Studies in Humanism, pref ., xiv, xv. 



42 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

shown to absolutist systems, or the systems 
which treat the supposition of an Absolute 
Being as a necessary philosophical postulate 
and accord to the conception of the Absolute 
a principal function in construing the universe. 
Doubtless in their polemic against absolutist 
systems pragmatists have often had in mind 
a rather ultra type of speculation, a theory 
which ascribes such an inclusive role to the 
universal as to threaten to take away all 
standing ground from the individual and the 
particular. However, they make it evident 
that they are ready to criticize any type of 
philosophy which takes any considerable ac- 
count of the conception of the Absolute. 
"The notion of absolute reality," says Schiller, 
"is doubly pernicious: (1) as reducing our 
reality to unreality in comparison to a higher 
reality, and (2) as making the ideal of reality 
seem unattainable." 4 Professor James declares 
that the "radical empiricism which he advo- 
cates treats the whole as a collection and the 
universal as an abstraction," 5 and that he 
finds "no reason for even suspecting the exist- 
ence of any reality of a higher denomination 
than that distributed and strung along, a 
flowing sort of reality which we finite beings 

4 Studies in Humanism, p. 217. 

6 Essays in Radical Empiricism, pp. 41, 42, 



PRAGMATISM 43 

swim in." 6 An opinion quite in accord with 
this is given by H. H. Bawden in the state- 
ment, "The only absolute required is the con- 
crete process of experience itself." 7 Professor 
Dewey shows in his repudiation of the ultimate 
as an object of inquiry how perfectly unrecon- 
ciled he is to the idea of the Absolute. "Philoso- 
ophy," he says, "will have to surrender all 
pretension to be peculiarly concerned with 
ultimate reality"; and he scores Bergson for 
deeming it "necessary to substitute an ulti- 
mate and absolute flux for an ultimate and 
absolute permanence." 8 

It should be noticed that Schiller, in spite 
of his repudiation of the idea of the Absolute, 
admits the legitimacy of making ultimates an 
object of inquiry, and so lays a basis for a 
pretty high valuation of metaphysics, the chief 
concern of which is precisely with ultimates. 
Quite in contrast with many of his fellow 
pragmatists he declares in a relatively late 
product of his pen: "It is futile to bid us 
confine ourselves to this present world of 
phenomena, and to assure us that we have 
no interest to raise the question of God and 



6 A Pluralistic Universe, pp. 212, 213. 

7 The Principles of Pragmatism, p. 39. 

8 Creative Intelligence, Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude, 
pp. 53, 54, Henry Holt & Co., New York. 






44 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

of our future. The routine of practice and the 
world of phenomena, the sphere of positive 
science, are not self-supporting, self-sufficing, 
and self-explaining. They point beyond them- 
selves to a reality which underlies them, back 
to a past from which they are descended, and 
forward to a future they foreshadow. . . . Meta- 
physics must exist as the science of ultimate 
problems, if not of ultimate solutions." 9 

Instead of applying to a given notion the 
metaphysical test of compatibility with the 
other factors which must be recognized in a 
comprehensive and harmonious system, a sys- 
tem which takes serious account of ultimates, 
pragmatism emphasizes the test of practical 
consequences. In case of disputed questions 
it brings forward, says Professor James, the 
inquiry, "what difference would it practically 
make to anyone if this notion rather than 
that notion were true ? If no practical differ- 
ence can be traced, then the alternatives mean 
practically the same thing, and all dispute is 
idle. Whenever a dispute is serious, we ought 
to be able to show some practical difference 
that must follow from one side or the other 
being right." 10 From this point of view he 
asserts that pragmatism is in affinity both 

9 Riddles of the Sphinx, revised edition, 1910, pp. 12, 149. 
"Pragmatism, pp. 45, 46. 



PRAGMATISM 45 

with utilitarianism and positivism. 11 Schiller 
and others equally exalt the criterion of prac- 
tical consequences. It would seem, then, that 
its advocates are inclined to define pragmatism 
as rather a method than a precise scheme of 
philosophical conceptions. This, of course, is 
not equal to saying that, as a matter of fact, 
they swing clear of theories or dogmas. The 
admission of Schiller is worth noting, that 
"methods may be turned into metaphysics by 
accepting them as ultimate." 12 

In the second place, we consider the con- 
ception which pragmatists take of the think- 
ing or cognitive process and of its relation to 
reality. This feature has received special 
emphasis in the school of Dewey. In the 
view of this school the relation in question 
is much more than one of correspondence. 
That such is the fact Professor James has 
also asserted, but in a way which might not 
command full assent from his pragmatist 
brethren. "I maintain," he says, "a given 
undivided portion of experience, taken in one 
context of associates, plays the part of a 
knower, of a state of mind, of consciousness; 
while in a different context the same undi- 
vided bit of experience plays the part of a 
thing known, of an objective 'content.' In a 

n Ibid., p. 53. 12 Humauism, p. 19, 



46 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

word, in one group it figures as a thought, 
in another group as a thing. And, since it 
can figure in both groups simultaneously, we 
have every right to speak of it as subjective 
and objective both at once." 13 An out-and-out 
affirmation, like this, of the substantial identity 
of thought and thing, of the knowing subject 
and of the object, we have not found to be 
characteristic of the school of Dewey. Their 
recurring thesis is, rather, that the thought 
or cognitive activity of the human subject 
is continuously a power to modify reality. 
In accordance with this standpoint, the title 
of one of their books is given as "Creative 
Intelligence." Knowing, they maintain, is not 
an indifferent or colorless operation, but is, 
rather, fraught with purpose, and is efficient 
to work transformation in the world. Of this 
transformation there is both abundant need 
and distinct opportunity for its effectuation, 
since the world as it confronts us is at once 
only partially rational and to a large extent 
plastic. 

The following sentences will serve to illus- 
trate the manner in which Professor Dewey 
puts these points: "Experience in its vital 
form is experimental, an effort to change the 
given; it is characterized by projection, by 

13 Essays in Radical Empiricism, pp. 9, 10. 



PRAGMATISM 47 

reaching forward into the unknown." 14 
"Knowledge is always a matter of the use 
that is made of experienced natural events, 
a use in which given things are treated as 
indications of what will be experienced under 
different conditions." 15 "A world already, in 
its intrinsic structure, dominated by thought 
is not a world in which, save by the contra- 
diction of premises, thinking has anything to 
do." 16 "It is the business of that organic 
adaptation involved in all knowing to make a 
certain difference in reality." 17 "The change in 
the environment made by knowing is not a 
total and miraculous change. Transformation, 
readjustment, reconstruction all imply prior 
existences: existences which have characters 
and behaviors of their own which must be 
accepted, consulted, humored, manipulated 
and made light of, in all kinds of differing 
ways in the different contexts of different 
problems." 18 

In exposition of an identical standpoint 
Professor A. W. Moore has remarked: "Con- 
cerning the place and function of thinking in 
experience (or in the world) the pragmatist 
became convinced that not only do all will 

"Creative Intelligence, p. 7. 16 Ibid., p. 47. 16 Ibid., p. 27. 
"Essays in Honor of William James, p. 69. 
18 Ibid., p. 78. 






48 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

and purpose involve ideas, but that all ideas 
are volitional and purposive, and therefore 
ideas cannot be true or false entirely inde- 
pendent of their purposive and volitional char- 
acter." 19 "If an idea is something more than 
a mere algebraic symbol, if it is the essence of 
an idea to so connect one experienced thing, 
or quale, or content, with another, that it may 
be maintained or eliminated, or in some degree 
altered, it would seem to follow that the 
strict difference in the character of ideas would 
be the difference in efficiency in effecting this 
kind of connection." 20 

In the school of Dewey the transforming 
virtue of the thinking, knowing process is 
conceived to have its culmination in the 
shaping of human society toward a better 
ideal. Naturally, as this school negates all 
reference to any higher entity or more sig- 
nificant unity than society on its earthly 
theater, it feels called upon to stress the de- 
mand for concentrating thought and effort 
upon the interests of society taken in the 
specified range. It is inclined to retrench the 
conception of the separate status of the indi- 
vidual. Even his consciousness is far from 
being a private matter. At least Professor 



"Pragmatism and its Critics, pp. 14, 15, University of 
Chicago Press. 20 Ibid., p. 85. 



PRAGMATISM 49 

Moore so affirms in defining the pragmatist 
point of view. "However private or indi- 
vidual," he says, "consciousness may be, it 
is never to be regarded as wholly or mainly 
the function of an individual mind or soul 
or of a single organism or brain." 21 Of a form 
of argumentation which he evidently regards 
as agreeable to the pragmatist creed, he re- 
marks, "It assumes that my consciousness is 
a function of a social process in which my 
body or brain or mind is only one factor. It 
presupposes that my thinking and feeling may 
be as truly a function of your brain or mind 
as of my own. My thinking of sending for 
you as a physician to treat my headache is 
as truly a function of your medically trained 
brain as of my own aching one. And your 
thinking as you diagnose my case is no less 
obviously a function of my head than of your 
own. . . . Your thinking literally belongs to 
me." 22 

The third special feature of pragmatism is 
closely connected with the foregoing and lies 
in the conception that truth is something 
progressively shaped or remodeled on the 
basis of a utilitarian quest. What it amounts 
to is the expedient under the given conditions. 
"The true," says Professor James, "to put it 

21 Ibid.. p. 230. 22 Ibid., p. 275. 



50 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

very briefly, is only the expedient in the way 
of our thinking, just as the right is only the 
expedient in the way of our behaving." 23 "The 
possession of true thoughts means everywhere 
the possession of invaluable instruments of 
action." 24 "Truth is one species of good, and 
not, as is usually supposed, a category dis- 
tinct from good and coordinate with it. The 
true is whatever proves to be good in the way 
of belief, and good, too, for definite assignable 
reasons." 25 "Truths," contends Schiller, "must 
be used to become true, and (in the end) to 
stay true. . . . All meaning depends on pur- 
pose." 26 "In all actual knowing the question 
whether an assertion is true or false is decided 
uniformly and very simply. It is decided, that 
is, by its consequences, by its bearing on the 
interest which prompted to the assertion, by 
its relation to the purpose which put the 
question." 27 "All that truth has to do is 
to be an instrument in man's manipulation 
of his experience." 28 Truth, as rated by Pro- 
fessor Moore, is the working quality of an 
idea. 29 

In some of these citations there is a sugges- 



23 Pragmatism, p. 222. 24 Ibid., p. 202. 2B Ibid. p p. 7. 

2B Humanism, p. 9. 27 Ibid., p. 154. 

28 Riddles of the Sphinx, pp. 133, 134. 
29 Pragmatism and its Critics, p. 86. 



PRAGMATISM 51 

tion that truth is not a fixed matter, but 
rather something made to achieve a purpose, 
the only limitation being that it should be so 
made as to fit the existing conditions. Various 
pragmatist declarations unequivocally enforce 
this point of view. "Truth," says Professor 
James, "happens to an idea. It becomes true, 
is made true by events. . . . Truth for us is 
simply a collective name for verifying processes, 
just as 'health,' 'wealth,' 'strength,' etc., are 
names for other processes connected with life, 
and also pursued because it pays to pursue 
them. Truth is made just as health, wealth, 
and strength are made in the course of expe- 
rience. . . . Truth grafts itself on previous truth, 
modifying it in the process, just as idiom 
grafts itself on previous idiom, and law on 
previous law." 30 "The truths of past ages," 
observes Schiller, "are at present recognized 
as errors; those of the present are on their 
way to be so recognized. ... If we adopt the 
humanist view that truth is essentially a 
valuation, a laudatory label wherewith we 
decorate the most useful conceptions which we 
have found up to date in order to control our 
experience, there is not the slightest reason 
why the steady flow of the stream of truths 
that pass away should inspire us with dismay." 31 

30 Pragmatism, pp. 201, 218, 241. 31 Humanism, pp. 205, 211. 



52 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

"Truth," claims Bawden, "is itself a growth 
changing from situation to situation." 32 

Even such select truths as have been rated 
among the intuitions, or the primal elements 
and conditions of rational experience in the 
point of view of pragmatism are not exempt 
from contingency and uncertainty. Thus Pro- 
fessor James suggests that the common sense 
categories may have gained their supremacy by 
a process just like that by which the concep- 
tions due to Democritus, Berkely, or Darwin, 
achieved their triumph in more recent times; 
in other words, they may have been discovered 
by prehistoric geniuses, and then been passed 
along until, under the power of habit, they 
became controlling. 33 An equal suggestion of 
our destitution of any certified basal elements 
of truth is contained in this curious declaration : 
"Common sense is better for one sphere of life, 
science for another, philosophical criticism for 
a third; but whether either be truer absolutely, 
Heaven only knows." 34 Words not less adapted 
to negate the idea of ultimate and fixed ele- 
ments of thought have been penned by Schiller. 
"We never get back," he says, "to truths so 
fundamental that they cannot possibly be con- 
ceived as having been made. There are no 

32 The Principles of Pragmatism, p. 204. 
^Pragmatism, pp. 182, 183. 34 Ibid., p. 190. 



PRAGMATISM 53 

a priori truths which are indisputable, as is 
shown by the fact that there is not, and never 
has been, any agreement as to what they 
are. All the a priori truths, moreover, which 
are commonly alleged, can be conceived as 
postulates suggested by a previous situation." 35 
In the degree in which it discredits the 
possibility of going back to unassailable founda- 
tions, pragmatism naturally is inclined to place 
the emphasis upon the future outcome. In- 
quiry, it is urged, should take the forward 
direction, instead of concerning itself with 
origins or with ultimates lying back in the 
past. This aspect of the system is vigorously 
asserted by Professor James. He names as 
characteristic of pragmatism "the attitude of 
looking away from first things, principles, 
categories, supposed necessities; and of looking 
towards last things, fruits, consequences, 
facts." 36 It recognizes that it has to deal with 
an unfinished edition of the universe, and 
that the best test which can be applied to 
theories is the reference to prospective results. 
"Design, free-will, the absolutist mind, spirit 
instead of matter, have for their sole meaning 
a better promise as to this world's outcome." 37 
In a quite similar vein Schiller remarks: "Prag- 

35 Humanism, p. 197. 36 Pragmatism, p. 54. 

37 Ibid., p. 127. 



54 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

matism is not a retrospective theory. Its 
significance does not lie in its explanation of 
the past so much as in its present attitude 
toward the future. . . . What it really concerns 
us to know is how to act with a view to the 
future." 38 It should not be overlooked, how- 
ever, that Schiller has elsewhere put no slight 
emphasis on the necessity and the utility of 
going back to ultimates. 

It remains to consider the attitude of prag- 
matists toward theology and religion. As 
respects theology a principal inquiry concerns 
their bearing toward the theistic postulate. 

Professor Dewey's exclusion from the phil- 
osophical domain of every thought reaching 
above or beyond the world flux, the stream of 
changes recognized by evolutionary science, 
logically implies agnostic unconcern in rela- 
tion to the great question of theism; and we 
have not discovered that he has departed 
from the demands of logical consistency by any 
show of practical interest in that question. 
How emphatically he dismisses what the name 
of God has commonly stood for in Christian 
thinking appears in the following statement: 
"Once admit that the sole verifiable or fruitful 
object of knowledge is the particular set of 
changes that generate the object of study, 

88 Humanism, p. 198. 



PRAGMATISM 55 

together with the consequences that then flow 
from it, and no intelligible question can be 
asked about what by assumption is outside." 39 
Of Professor James it can truly be said that 
he was an interested and appreciative student 
of religion, and was not disposed to thrust 
theology entirely out of consideration. The 
genial warmth with which he could address him- 
self to the former theme is sufficiently attested 
by his book on The Varieties of Religious 
Experience. In relation to theological theory 
he admits that a good case can be made out 
for the hypothesis of God on the pragmatist 
basis of judgment by consequences. 40 He so 
qualifies, however, the force of this admission 
as to make it impossible to rate him as an 
advocate of the unequivocal theistic postulate. 
While he confesses a firm belief in the existence 
of superhuman powers which work toward 
ideal ends, and is ready to acknowledge among 
these a God relatively preeminent, he rejects 
the supposition of a perfect all-sufficient Deity. 
"The line of least resistance," he writes, "as 
it seems to me, both in theology and in philos- 
ophy, is to accept, along with the superhuman 
consciousness, the notion that it is not all- 



39 The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Es- 
says in Contemporary Thought, pp. 13, 14. 
''"Pragmatism, p. 300. 



56 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

embracing; the notion, in other words, that 
there is a God, but that he is finite, either in 
power or in knowledge, or in both at once." 41 
Evidently, the professor's position is adapted 
to raise the question whether a polytheistic 
conception may not claim tolerance. As a 
matter of fact, we find a Mormon apologist 
supporting his polytheistic scheme by reference 
to the pluralistic theory of Professor James. 42 
In the writings of Schiller we find a valuation 
of the thought of God which vies, in not a few 
respects, with that of the stanchest theist. 
He defines him as transcendent nonmaterial 
Deity, the cause and upholder of the universe. 
He is also resolute in claiming for men personal 
immortality as their proper destiny. On the 
other hand, reacting from the radical abso- 
lutist systems in his neighborhood, he pro- 
nounces distinctly for the finitude of God, and 
postulates spirits who share with him the rank 
of unoriginated being, though having in him 
their supreme ruler and aim. 43 

As respects the merits of the pragmatism 
thus far reviewed, we should be quite loath 
to speak in terms of wholesale disparagement. 

fl A Pluralistic Universe, p. 311. 

^B. H. Roberts, New Witness for God, I, 468-470. 

^Riddles of the Sphinx, revised edition, pp. 300ff. 



PRAGMATISM 57 

It will not be difficult, however, to mention 
some points which tend to limit our apprecia- 
tion of this recent and very confident venture 
in the domain of philosophy. 

In the first place, we are fully persuaded 
that its opposition to a philosophical use of 
the idea of the Absolute passes the bounds 
of discretion. Doubtless it is true that this 
idea has sometimes been construed in such a 
way as to become a stumbling-block. One 
and another speculator interpreting the Ab- 
solute, not simply as the primary and inde- 
pendent being who is necessarily rated as the 
ground of all secondary being, but in strict- 
ness as the totality of being and experience, 
has given us a subject unmanageable and quite 
useless in any effort to explain the actual. 
Such misadventures, however, by no means 
justify a summary dismissal of the idea of 
the Absolute. If we may trust the testimony 
of human thinking in the past, that idea has 
come to stay. The inquisitive human mind 
cannot be expected perpetually to waive the 
question as to the ultimate and sufficient 
ground of the interrelation of things. Coming 
into contact with the flowing, it must be 
impelled to ask, "Whence the stream?" Being 
made aware of the dependent on every hand, 
it must be incited to ask, "Where and what is 



58 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

that upon which dependence ultimately falls?" 
Being met by numberless tokens of a wide- 
reaching system, it must be rendered in- 
quisitive as to the principle or power which 
is adequate to unify the great whole and to 
conserve it in its character as a system. Ques- 
tions like these cannot be subjected to an 
effective veto. But, if they are to be answered 
even partially, an appeal must be made in 
some form to the idea of the Absolute. 

The test of practical consequences which 
pragmatism insists upon applying to ideas is 
undoubtedly a worthy and important test. 
But that fact is no sufficient justification for 
pitting it against metaphysics to the radical 
disparagement of the latter. The range of 
practical consequences is not to be unduly 
narrowed. The satisfaction of man's intel- 
lectual nature is a distinct utility, an end in- 
vested with great practical import. A com- 
prehensive view of the universe, which affords 
a relative rest to his inquiring spirit and is at 
the same time in harmony with his ethical 
and religious nature, is not to be tabooed as 
being a speculative or metaphysical concoction. 
It is none the less practical because it is meta- 
physical. Good metaphysics is a highly im- 
portant aid to good and salutary practice. 
Not a few of the views, it may be confessed, 



PRAGMATISM 59 

which have been put forth in the name of 
metaphysics, are quite worthy of being con- 
signed to the scrap-heap. And so also are 
many of the views which have been exploited 
in the name of science, politics, and sociology. 
No more in the metaphysical than in other 
spheres does a list of miscarriages nullify the 
possibility of normal activity and fruitful 
achievement. 

An all-round view of the conditions of apply- 
ing the test of practical consequences, it 
strikes us, would lead pragmatists to be more 
tolerant of the supposition that the so-called 
categories are something else than chance 
products, more ready to admit that they be- 
speak the truth that man as a rational being 
has implicit in his mental furnishing certain 
viewpoints which can and must be applied to 
the subject-matter of experience. It is diffi- 
cult to see how a being destitute of this fur- 
nishing could be in a position to utilize con- 
sequences in the direction of a rational control 
of life. Consequences cannot be supposed to 
concatenate themselves into a series of lessons. 
In order to this result they must be conse- 
quences to a subject which is enough of a 
rational organism to have in itself, implicit in 
its constitution, somewhat of a standard, some 
initial means of interpreting and estimating 



<c 



60 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

what comes within the widening range of 
experience. 

It was noticed that pragmatism greatly em- 
phasizes the purposive character of the think- 
ing or cognitive process and magnifies its 
function in transforming reality. That there 
is a basis of truth in this order of representa- 
tion is to be admitted. What needs to be 
criticized is the disposition to push the repre- 
sentation beyond warrantable limits. The act 
of knowing may have no conscious purpose 
at all, knowledge being in many connections 
unmistakably thrust upon its subject; and, 
where purpose is an accompaniment it may 
terminate in the mere satisfaction of knowing. 
There may be no aim to transform reality and 
no effect in that direction. So far as we are 
able to discover, the researches of astronomers 
carried on since the dawn of civilization have 
not availed to modify appreciably the stellar 
universe. 

That the perfecting of society should be 
made by pragmatists the crowning purpose is 
no cause in itself for adverse comment. We 
are moved, however, to inquire whether the 
conception of society as simply a mundane 
affair — to take the representation largely cur- 
rent among pragmatists — is best calculated to 
inspire effective interest; and also whether it is 






PRAGMATISM 61 

legitimate to go to such lengths as a prominent 
expositor does in curtailing the individual cast 
of consciousness and magnifying its social 
ranges. Surely, a man's own sense of selfhood 
or personal consciousness is unique. Nothing 
is more individual. To speak of a community 
consciousness may be an admissible figure of 
speech, since in a group of individuals each 
may have a consciousness similar in various 
particulars of content to that of the rest. But 
similarity is not identity. A man cannot 
speak seriously either of sharing his neighbor's 
consciousness, or of exchanging heads with 
him, without giving evidence, not perhaps 
that he has lost his head, but certainly that 
for the moment he is allowing it to function 
rather queerly. 

Nothing in pragmatism is suited to incite 
to more earnest protest than the makeshift 
character which in multiplied instances it 
assigns to truth. Such a form of description, 
we are confident, can never win general ac- 
ceptance. Truth is not a mere expedient 
directed to utilitarian ends. Of course in a 
rational system recognition of truth and obedi- 
ence to its dictates ought to bring unequivocal 
benefits. To suppose truth and falsehood to 
be placed on a parity in respect of ultimate 
consequences amounts to a glaring impeach- 



62 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

ment of the rationality of the system. But it 
is one thing to recognize an intrinsic connec- 
tion between conformity to truth and bene- 
ficial results, and quite another thing to dub 
certain notions as true simply and solely be- 
cause they are supposed to subserve beneficial 
ends. Truth is indeed a good in the sense 
that conformity to it works toward a good. 
But truth is truth as well as a good. There 
is that in it which is not properly covered by 
any utilitarian category. Taken comprehen- 
sively, it is the whole rational system as it 
exists in and for the highest intelligence. 
Taken in detail, it is a congruous part of the 
rational system. It can be contemplated, and 
in innumerable instances is contemplated, quite 
apart from a reference to prospective benefits. 
In this or that doubtful instance we may, 
undeniably, be helped to a conviction respect- 
ing a truth by a reference to practical conse- 
quences; but evidently a way of getting at 
some truths, or many truths, is not to be 
construed offhand as determinative or declar- 
atory of the proper nature of truth. By 
employing a tool I may ascertain that it is 
adapted to certain uses. The truth of the 
adaptation, however, is in no wise dependent 
upon my manipulation of the tool. With all 
respect to Professor James, it must be pro- 






PRAGMATISM 63 

nounced a queer mental feat which confounds 
truth with a verification process. Verification 
simply puts a tag of valuation upon the al- 
ready existing truth. If I suppose that a 
given amalgam is composed of such and such 
elements, and by applying the proper tests I 
approve the supposition, I have gained a 
verification of the truth embodied in the 
amalgam, but the truth or fact existent in 
the given connection I most certainly have 
not created. As the very terms imply, truth 
and the process of verifying truth are two 
different things. 

The pragmatist proposition on the changing 
nature of truth, if taken in the broadest sense, 
is obviously self-canceling. If all truths change, 
then this very proposition, which assumes 
to state a truth, is itself exposed to change, 
or, in other words, exposed to cancellation. 44 
The pragmatist needs to take note that if he 
is to be thoroughgoing in abolishing all fixity, 
he will abolish his own standing-ground. The 
attempt to reduce truth to a purely relative 
status or value is bound to end either in open 
bankruptcy or covert self-contradiction. As 
Professor Hugo Miinsterberg has said: "We 
may be satisfied with provisional formulations, 

44 Compare H. H. Home, Free Will and Human Respon- 
sibility, p. 159. 






64 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

but their purpose is, after all, determined by 
the demand that they approach a truth whose 
unconditional reality is presupposed. To deny 
every truth which is more than relative means 
to deprive every thought, including skep- 
tical thought itself, of its own presupposi- 
tions." 45 

The pragmatist attempt to withdraw con- 
sideration from beginnings and to give it an 
exclusive direction to ends cannot be approved 
as logical. Very likely, in a practical point 
of view, ends may deserve larger consideration 
than beginnings. But the two are not in- 
differently related, and contemplation of the 
one as good as necessitates reference to the 
other. A divine origin of the world is prophetic 
of an end of the world which is worthy of a 
divine agent, and an end of the world worthy 
of a divine agent makes demand for a divine 
origin. If at the beginning there was only a 
kind of general mush of things, it may very 
well be that the end will reveal only a kind of 
general mush of things. Professor James vir- 
tually admits this in his statement relative to 
the different kinds of outcome promised by a 
materialistic and a spiritualistic or theistic 
philosophy respectively. The admission is dis- 
tinctly out of harmony with philosophical in- 

^The Eternal Values, p. 37. 



PRAGMATISM 65 

difference toward the retrospective point of 
view. 

Finally, the type of pluralistic conception of 
the universe which has been advocated by 
some of the champions of pragmatism does not 
tend to appreciation of the new philosophy. 
Of course in some sense room must be made 
for the many in the system of reality, as well 
as for the one. On the supposition that finite 
persons are possessed of genuine freedom an 
aspect of plurality has a place in the world 
system. But it is not necessary so to construe 
the plurality as to banish a stanch conception 
of unity. If the free persons are made pro- 
foundly dependent, in respect of origin, con- 
tinued subsistence, and capacity for interaction, 
upon a being who is alone self-subsistent, and 
whose benevolent will is the sole ground of 
existence for any other being, we still are left 
with a satisfying conception of fundamental 
unity. This is the genuine theistic conception 
which has prevailed through all the Christian 
centuries, and it would take more potent 
persuasives than our pragmatist friends have 
yet offered to furnish any motive to exchange 
it for a point of view closely akin to that of 
antique mythology. 

Our conclusion can be expressed in a single 
sentence. In setting forth the test of practical 



66 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

consequences pragmatism has afforded a lesson 
to which heed may fitly be given; but it has 
construed this test one-sidedly, and has ad- 
vocated various theories which invite serious 
criticism. 



ESSAY III 

PROMINENT FEATURES IN THE PHIL- 
OSOPHY OF HENRI BERGSON 



ESSAY III 

PROMINENT FEATURES IN THE PHIL- 
OSOPHY OF HENRI BERGSON 

Estimates of the worth of the distinguished 
Frenchman's adventures in the metaphysical 
realm are by no means homogeneous. They 
range all the way from emphatic laudation to 
emphatic disparagement. A prominent French 
thinker, Edouard Le Roy, pronounces Berg- 
son's philosophy epoch-making. "It is," he 
says, "after cool consideration, with full con- 
sciousness of the exact value of words, that 
we are able to pronounce the revolution which 
it effects equal in importance to that effected 
by Kant, or even by Socrates." 1 Wilbois and 
others of Bergson's countrymen, amounting to 
a considerable group, are also warm admirers 
of his philosophy. His election to membership 
in the French Academy testifies likewise that 
he does not lack appreciation in his own coun- 
try. In England H. W. Carr, Fellow of the 
University of London, has devoted a volume 
to the exposition of the new philosophy, and 
has recorded the judgment that in respect of 
method it represents a vast advance over 

X A New Philosophy, Henri Bergson, pp. 1, 2. 
69 



70 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

philosophic procedure for twenty-five hundred 
years. 2 In America Professor William James, 
though not altogether a Bergsonian in his 
thinking, expressed a high appreciation of the 
brilliant Frenchman, and others in our midst 
have rendered an equal tribute. 

On the other hand adverse criticism has been 
widespread, and in not a few instances quite 
emphatic. Fouilee judges that the logical 
outcome of Bergson's philosophy lies in the 
direction of skepticism and nihilism. 3 Rageot 
remarks on its affiliation with a psychological 
mysticism which ever falls short of verifiable 
results. 4 Berthelot, member of the Academie 
Belgique, detects in Bergson's writings ele- 
ments of artifice and self-contradiction. 5 Pro- 
fessor Antonio Aliotta renders this opinion: 
"The reaction from intellectualism reaches its 
zenith in the teaching of Bergson. He opposes 
exaggeration to exaggeration, impoverishment 
to impoverishment." 6 An English advocate of 
science over against the claims of speculation 
complains that Bergson, as a rule, uses facts 



2 The Philosophy of Change. A Study of the Fundamental 
Principles of the Philosophy of Bergson, p. 21. 

3 J. McKellar Stewart, A Critical Exposition of Bergson's 
Philosophy, p. 148. 

4 Les Savants et la Philosophic, pp. 178, 179. 

D Un Romantisme Utilitaire, vol. ii. 

6 The Idealistic Reaction against Science, p. 128. 



HENRI BERGSON 71 

to confute opposing theories but not to sus- 
tain his own, and pronounces his metaphysics 
a cloud of words carrying with them no real 
meaning. 7 "The system of M. Bergson," says 
Santayana, "has neither good sense, nor rigor, 
nor candor, nor solidity. It is a brilliant at- 
tempt to confuse the lessons of experience by 
refining on its texture, an attempt to make 
us halt, for the love of primitive illusions, in 
the path of discipline and reason." 8 Josiah 
Royce criticizes Bergson for assuming an in- 
tuition of reality where it would be more 
appropriate to speak of an interpretation, and 
notices his leaning to a mysticism which prom- 
ises a very equivocal outcome. 9 G. T. Ladd 
also scores Bergson's resort to the short-cut 
of mystical intuition, as opposed to a normal 
dependence on intellectual industry. 10 The 
conviction is expressed by Professor G. W. 
Cunningham that some of Bergson's funda- 
mental positions are unsound and that he can 
be shown to have contradicted himself in 
relation to his basal conception of legitimate 
philosophical method. 11 By Roman Catholic 

7 H. S. R. Elliott, Modern Science and the Illustrations of 
Professor Bergson, pp. 16, 55ff. 

8 Winds of Doctrine, p. 107. 

"The Problem of Christianity, II, pp. 285, 307. 
10 What Can I Know? pp. 71-73. 
U A Study of the Philosophy of Bergson. 



72 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

authority a left-handed compliment has been 
paid to the philosopher in the placing of several 
of his most prominent works in the Index 
of Prohibited Writings. 

As intelligibility is a prime condition of value 
in any system of thought, it may be supposed 
that those who are most fervent in praise of 
the new philosophy are convinced that at 
least to them it is not dark or enigmatic. We 
notice, however, that some who take a friendly 
attitude toward Bergson acknowledge that his 
meaning at more than one point is difficult to 
grasp. "I have to confess," says William 
James, "that his originality is so profuse that 
many of his ideas baffle me entirely. I doubt 
whether anyone understands him all over, so 
to speak." 12 An expositor who is conspicu- 
ously more ambitious to find matter for ap- 
proval than for censure confirms the impression 
of James by saying, "I know of no philosopher 
who professes to understand him completely." 13 
Another expositor, whose tone is, on the whole, 
rather friendly to Bergson, asserts that one 
would require a new mind to understand his ac- 
count of the relations between body and mind as 
contained in his book on Matter and Memory. 14 



12 Cited by Hermann, Eucken and Bergson, p. 128. 
13 Dodson, Bergson and the Modern Spirit, pp. 23, 24. 
U E. Hermann, Eucken and Bergson, pp. 140, 141. 



HENRI BERGSON 73 

The genius of Bergson for illustration has 
often been commented upon, and it might be 
supposed that this would serve as a select 
instrumentality for illuminating his meaning. 
But in the deeper ranges of thought illustra- 
tions are not apt to apply perfectly, and im- 
perfectly fitting illustrations can easily serve 
to confuse the understanding. We do not 
discern here any secure means of guidance. 
On the whole, we should not find it an alto- 
gether comfortable task to rebut the charge of 
rashness in attempting to outline even the 
salient features of Bergson's thinking. 

The relation of Bergson to pragmatism has 
occasionally been a matter of discussion. Some 
points of affinity between his thinking and that 
of leading pragmatists may doubtless be spec- 
ified. In common with them he makes large 
account of the idea of evolution. His con- 
ception of the utilitarian function of the in- 
tellect has also a certain appearance of allying 
him with a fundamental proposition of prag- 
matism. Still, Bergson in spirit and ruling 
conceptions is quite other than a pragmatist. 
His rating of the intellect does not commit 
him to a utilitarian philosophy, since he recog- 
nizes another instrument, and one much more 
effective, for getting at truth. In the use of 
this potent instrument, he is convinced, there 



74 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

is a possibility of grasping ultimate truths, and 
not merely of attaining to serviceable points 
of view. Herein lie is at a great remove from 
the platform of James and Dewey. As a 
writer who represents the pragmatist school 
puts the matter, "It is the spirit of the Berg- 
sonian philosophy that the true shall be the 
opposite of the useful, while for pragmatism 
the very essence of truth is utility. Utility 
abolishes insight according to Bergson; accord- 
ing to James, without utility, insight can have 
no meaning." 15 

In the philosophy of Bergson method holds 
a place not second to that of content. Central 
to his method is the function accorded to in- 
tuition as the one trustworthy means of grasp- 
ing the true nature of reality. "It is," he says, 
"to the very inwardness of life that intuition 
leads us. . . . By the sympathetic communica- 
tion which it establishes between us and the 
rest of the living, by the expansion of our 
consciousness which it brings about, it intro- 
duces us into life's own domain, which is 
reciprocal interpenetration, endlessly continued 
creation." 16 As between the two ways of 

1B H. M. Kallen, William James and Henri Bergson, pp. 91, 
92. Compare Dodson, Bergson and the Modern Spirit, p. 68; 
J. Maritain, La Philosophic Bergsonienne, p. 69. 

"Creative Evolution, pp. 176-178, Henry Holt & Co., New 
York. 



HENRI BERGSON 75 

knowing an object — that of moving around it 
and that of entering into it — intuition stands 
for the second. "The first depends on the 
point of view at which we are placed and on 
the symbols by which we express ourselves. 
The second neither depends upon a point of 
view nor relies on .any symbol." 17 "Intuition, 
if it could be prolonged beyond a few instants, 
would not only make the philosopher agree 
with his own thought, but also all philosophers 
with each other. Such as it is, fugitive and 
incomplete, it is in each system what is worth 
more than the system and survives it." 18 

Among the formal definitions of intuition 
propounded in Bergson's writings the follow- 
ing is perhaps as comprehensive as any: "By 
intuition is meant a kind of intellectual sympathy 
by which one places oneself within an object 
in order to coincide with what is unique in it 
and consequently inexpressible." 19 As sym- 
pathy intuition is associated with instinct. De- 
fining from this point of view, Bergson says: 
"By intuition I mean instinct that has become 
disinterested, self-conscious, capable of reflecting 
on its object and enlarging it indefinitely." 20 



"Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 1. 
18 Creative Evolution, p. 238. 
"Introduction to Metaphysics, pp. 7, 8. 
20 Creative Evolution, p. 176. 



76 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

From the foregoing definitions it appears 
that intuition stands in association with in- 
telligence as well as with instinct. Among 
statements indicating the character of this 
association we judge these to be as significant 
as any. "Though intuition transcends intelli- 
gence, it is from intelligence that has come 
the push that has made it rise to the point 
it has reached. Without intelligence it would 
have remained in the form of instinct, riveted 
to the special object of its practical interest 
and turned outward by it into movements of 
locomotion." 21 "Dialectic is necessary to put 
intuition to the proof, necessary also in order 
that intuition should break itself up into con- 
cepts and so to propagate it to other men." 22 

Sentences like these imply that Bergson 
regarded intellect, or intelligence, as auxiliary 
to the functioning of intuition, and so not 
holding an indifferent relation to philosophy. 
He has, however, much to say on the short- 
comings and incompetency of intelligence in 
the philosophical domain. By virtue of its 
nature intellect, he contends, is disqualified for 
insight into reality. To its static point of 
view all vital creative processes are foreign. 
"Reality appears as a ceaseless upspringing of 
something new, which has no sooner risen to 

21 Creative Evolution, pp. 177, 178. 22 Ibid., p. 238. 



HENRI BERGSON 77 

make the present than it has already fallen 
back into the past; at the exact moment it 
falls under the glance of intellect whose eyes 
are ever turned to the rear." 23 "The intellect 
bears within itself, in the form of natural logic, 
a latent geometrism that is set free in the 
measure and proportion that the intellect pene- 
trates into the inner nature of inert matter. . . . 
Now, when the intellect undertakes the study 
of life it necessarily treats the living like the 
inert." 24 Accordingly, "the intellect is charac- 
terized by a natural inability to comprehend 
life." 25 "Intuition and intellect represent two 
opposite directions of the work of consciousness : 
intuition goes in the very direction of life, 
intellect goes in the inverse direction, and thus 
finds itself naturally in accordance with the 
movement of matter." 26 "Intelligence is, before 
anything else, the faculty of relating one point 
of space to another, one material object to 
another; it applies to all things, but remains 
outside of them; and of the deep cause it sees 
only the effects spread out side by side." 27 
Owing to this predilection for the spatial and 
the solid, it fails of the true vision of time. 
"We do not think real time. But we live it, 
because life transcends intellect." 28 That the 

23 Ibid., p. 47. 24 Ibid., p. 195. 26 Ibid., p. 165. 

26 Ibid., p. 267. 27 Ibid., p. 175. 28 Ibid., p. 46. 



78 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

intellect should be specially at home in the 
realm of matter corresponds with its origin. 
"Intellectuality and materiality have been con- 
stituted in detail, by reciprocal adaptation. 
Both are derived from a wider and higher 
form of existence." 29 Its genesis dictates that 
intellect should be the chosen instrument of 
physical science, but that it should be relatively 
incompetent to meet the requirements of 
philosophy. 

The deficit on the side of intellect, as an 
instrument of philosophy, implies necessarily 
serious shortcomings on the part of concepts, 
inasmuch as they are the characteristic products 
of the intellect. The fact that they are gener- 
ally given to the expression of advantageous 
points of view places them aside from philos- 
ophy with its scrupulous avoidance of bias. 30 
Then, too, "concepts have the disadvantage of 
being in reality symbols substituted for the 
objects they symbolize. As symbols they 
figure only certain general aspects of an object. 
It is therefore useless to believe that with 
them we can seize a reality of which they 
present to us the shadow alone." 31 The change 
which is so characteristic of reality they can 



29 Creative Evolution, pp. 186, 187. 
30 lntroduction to Metaphysics, p. 43. 
^Ibid., pp. 17, 18, 



HENRI BERGSON 79 

only misrepresent. "The various concepts into 
which a change can be analyzed are so many 
stable views of the instability of the real." 
In practice they may be serviceable, but in 
philosophical construction they are at a dis- 
count. 32 

Bergson, however, is not minded to banish 
concepts outright from the metaphysical realm. 
"Metaphysics," he says, "must transcend con- 
cepts in order to reach intuition. Certainly, 
concepts are necessary to it, for all the other 
sciences work as a rule with concepts and meta- 
physics cannot dispense with the other sciences. 
But it is only truly itself when it goes beyond 
the concept, or at least when it frees itself 
from rigid and ready-made concepts." 33 

As was noticed, Bergson teaches that in 
order truly to know an object one must enter 
into it, and that this entrance is effected by 
intuition. Put in a more emphatic form, this 
entering into an object becomes an identifica- 
tion with it. That Bergson taught identifica- 
tion of the knower with the known in the 
cognitive act we find to be assumed by prom- 
inent interpreters. Thus J. M'Kellar Stewart, 
giving expression to the view of the French 
philosopher, remarks: "Metaphysical knowl- 
edge consists in a series of actions in which 

32 Ibid., pp. 53, 54. 33 Ibid. f p. 21. 



80 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

we live the life of the universe in its various 
rythms. We are for the instant what we 
know. ... In the act of knowing spatial reality 
the mind is literally spatialized." 34 In charac- 
terizing the same phase of Bergson's philosophy 
Santayana writes: "Consciousness is a stuff 
out of which things are made, and has all the 
attributes even the most material of its several 
objects; and there is no possibility of knowing 
save by becoming what one is trying to know. 
So perception lies for him where its object does, 
and is some part of it." 35 

If we glance at the content of Bergson's 
philosophy, we find nothing more character- 
istic than the proposition that change is funda- 
mentally descriptive of reality. With very good 
warrant it has been named "the philosophy of 
change," and its author has been styled 
"the new Heraclitus." The following state- 
ments of his. would seem to justify the title: 
"Change is far more radical than we are at 
first inclined to suppose. . . . There is no feel- 
ing, no idea, no volition, that is not under- 
going change every moment." 36 "We find that 
for a conscious being to exist is to change, is 
to mature, to mature is to go on creating one- 

34 A Critical Exposition of Bergson's Philosophy, pp. 27, 90. 
35 Winds of Doctrine, p. 88. 36 Creative Evolution, p. 1. 



HENRI BERGSON 81 

self endlessly. . . . What really deserves to pro- 
voke wonder is the ever-renewed creation 
which reality, whole and undivided, accom- 
plishes in advancing, for no complication of the 
mathematical order with itself, however elab- 
orate we may suppose it, can introduce an atom 
of novelty into the world." 37 No substratum 
is reserved from change. "As a matter of 
fact, this substratum has no reality; it is 
merely a symbol intended to recall unceasingly 
to our consciousness the artificial character of 
the process by which the attention places 
clean-cut states side by side where actually 
there is a continuity that unfolds." 38 "Every 
quality is change. In vain, moreover, shall 
we seek beneath the change the thing which 
changes. It is always provisionally, and in 
order to satisfy our imagination, that we 
attach the movement to a mobile." 39 "Making 
a clean sweep of everything that is only an 
imaginative symbol, the philosopher will see 
the material world melt back into a simple 
flux, a continuity of flowing, a becoming." 40 
No more radical doctrine of change could well 
be formulated. Reality in its entirety is 
made to consist essentially in change or move- 
ment. As is declared in comprehensive propo- 

37 Ibid., pp. 7, 217. ^Ibid., p. 4. 

39 Ibid., p. 301. »Ibid., p. 369. 



82 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

sitions of a very appreciative disciple of Berg- 
son: "Reality is movement, an ever-changing 
activity. . . . Movement is the meaning of 
change. The something that moves is an 
illusion engendered by the intellectual appre- 
hension of the movement." 41 

Intimately associated with change in Berg- 
son's system, and assigned a like importance, 
is duration. He even rates it as basal to a 
proper conception of reality. "We perceive," 
he says, "duration as a stream against which 
we cannot go. It is the foundation of our 
being, and, as we feel, the very substance of 
the world in which we live." 42 

The significance of this term may be indi- 
cated by a couple of definitions. "The mean- 
ing of duration," says Carr, "is that the past 
though acted and over is continued into and 
carried along in the present." 43 "Duration," 
observes Lindsay, "is a process of change in 
which none of the parts are external to one 
another, but interpenetrating, where the past is 
carried on into the present, where, therefore, 
there is no repetition, but a continual creation 
of what is new." 44 As may be judged from 



41 Carr, The Philosophy of Change, pp. 144, 176. 

^Creative Evolution, p. 39. 

^The Philosophy of Change, p. 157. 

^The Philosophy of Bergson, pp. 114, 115. 



HENRI BERGSON 83 

these statements, the gist of the Bergsonian 
notion of duration is change plus such an inter- 
connection of changes that the prior subsists 
in some sense in the subsequent. But the 
philosopher should be permitted to speak for 
himself. "If our existence," he says, "were 
composed of separate states with an impassive 
ego to unite them, for us there would be no 
duration. For an ego which does not change 
does not endure." 45 "The more we study the 
nature of time, the more we shall comprehend 
that duration means invention, the creation 
of forms, the continual elaboration of the 
absolutely new." 46 "Duration is the continuous 
progress of the past which gnaws into the 
future and which swells as it advances." 47 
"Without the survival of the past into the 
present, there would be no duration, but only 
instantaneity." 48 "The organism which lives 
is a thing that endures. Its past in its entirety 
is prolonged into its present and abides there 
actual and acting." 49 "Our past, as a whole, 
is made manifest in its impulse; it is felt in 
the form of tendency, although a small part 
of it only is known in the form of idea." 50 



^Creative Evolution, p. 4. 
46 Ibid., p. 11. 47 Ibid., p. 4. 

^Introduction to Metaphysics, pp, 44, 45. 
^Creative Evolution, p. 15. 60 Ibid., p. 5, 



84 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

Bergson considers it important to discrim- 
inate duration from the customary notion of 
time. In his view, "time, as a concept of 
the ordinary intelligence and also as a con- 
cept of physics, is a mongrel conception born 
of the unholy union between pure duration 
and pure space." 51 It is the demand of philos- 
ophy that time be kept clear of the spatial 
aspect, and be construed in its unique charac- 
ter as creative process. "We can analyze a 
thing, but not a process. Or, if we persist in 
analyzing it, we unconsciously transform the 
process into a thing and duration into ex- 
tensity." 52 No less an interest than the pro- 
vision of a tenable ground for the assertion 
of freedom is declared to be dependent upon 
the maintenance of this point of view. "Every 
demand," says Bergson, "for explanation in re- 
gard to freedom comes back without our 
suspecting it, to the following question: Can 
time be adequately represented by space? To 
which we answer: Yes, if you are dealing 
with time flown, No, if you speak of time 
flowing. Now, the free act takes place in time 
which is flowing and not in time which has 
already flown." 53 Time flown is an abstract 

61 Stewart, A Critical Exposition of Bergson's Philosophy, 
p. 48. 

B2 Bergson, Time and Free Will, pp, 219, 220. 53 Ibid., p. 221. 



HENRI BERGSON 85 

unreal time dominated by the spatial analogy, 
and acts ranged along this artificial time take 
on the appearance of the determined. To view 
the act as free we must place it in the real 
time which is identical with the creative 
process, being, as described by one in close 
affinity with Bergson, "an indivisible, qual- 
itative and organic becoming, foreign to space 
and refractory to number." 54 

Bergson's emphasis on the identity of reality 
with change, or movement to the new, makes 
him jealous of admitting foresight of future 
outcomes. The postulate of foresight seems to 
him to tie up reality to a fixed program and to 
conflict with the nature of time as a veritable 
becoming. "If there is nothing unforeseen," 
he says, "no invention or creation in the uni- 
verse, time is useless." 55 He will not admit 
that nature is such that even a supreme mind 
could foresee its state and content at any 
future date which might be selected. 56 This 
unforeseeability, he grants, may be very 
unpalatable to the intellect, which in pur- 
suance of its practical bent, likes to forecast 
issues; but philosophy is authorized to correct 
the intellectual predilection. 57 



M Le Roy, A New Philosophy, Henri Bergson, p. 189. 

^Creative Evolution, pp. 39, 40. 

68 Ibid., 37-39. 67 Ibid., pp. 29, 30. 



86 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

On this basis teleology or finality in any 
thoroughgoing sense cannot be retained. Berg- 
son, indeed, makes a kind of half apology for 
it, and rates it as preferable to the mechanical 
theory of the universe. But it cannot be seen 
that he gives it any real scope. "Life," he says, 
"in its entirety, regarded as a creative evolu- 
tion, transcends finality, if we understand by 
finality the realization of an idea conceived 
or conceivable in advance." 58 "Life is essen- 
tially a current sent through matter drawing 
from it what it can. There has not, there- 
fore, properly speaking, been any project or 
plan." 59 "The future appears as expanding 
the present; it was not, therefore, contained in 
the present in the form of a represented end." 60 
"When once the road has been traveled, we 
can glance over it, mark its direction, note 
this in psychological terms, and speak as if 
there had been pursuit of an end. ... But this 
finalistic interpretation has neither value nor 
significance except retrospectively." 61 

In Bergson's conception of change as basal 
to reality, of duration as implying the constant 
carrying over of the past into the present, and 
of the unforeseeability of the future outcome, 
we have in the main his doctrine of evolution. 

^Creative Evolution., p. 224. 69 Ibid., p. 265. 

fioibid., p. 52. 61 Ibid., pp. 50-52. 



HENRI BERGSON 87 

It is requisite to add only the idea of the 
original thrust or impulse from which the 
evolution proceeded and to which it owes its 
initial direction. Bergson puts this point as 
follows: We need to predicate "an original 
impetus of life, passing from one generation to 
another of germs through the developed or- 
ganisms which bridge the interval between the 
generations. This impetus, sustained right 
along the lines of evolution among which it 
gets divided, is the fundamental cause of 
variations, at least of those that are regularly 
passed on, that accumulate and create new 
species." 62 As very clearly expressing the 
Bergsonian position we may annex this state- 
ment of Le Roy: "Universal evolution, though 
creative, is not for all that quixotic or anarchist. 
It forms a sequence. It is a becoming with 
direction undoubtedly due, not to the attrac- 
tion of a clearly perceived goal, or to the 
guidance of an outer law, but to the actual 
tendency of the original thrust." 63 

In the opinion of Bergson, evolution, though 
in a sense a victorious progress, is in part a 
baffled movement. "It must not be forgotten," 
he says, "that the force which is evolving 
throughout the organized world is a limited 

62 Creative Evolution, p. 87. 

63 A New Philosophy, pp. 121, 122. 



88 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

force, which is always seeking to transcend it- 
self and always remains inadequate to the 
work it would fain produce. . . . From the top 
to the bottom of the organized world we do 
indeed find one great effort; but most often 
this effort turns short, sometimes paralyzed 
by contrary forces, sometimes diverted from 
what it should do by what it does, absorbed 
by the form it is engaged in taking, hypnotized 
by it as by a mirror." 64 

The relation of souls to the evolutionary 
stream is thus depicted by the philosopher: 
"Souls are continually being created, which 
nevertheless in a certain sense preexisted. 
They are nothing else than the little rills 
into which the great river of life divides 
itself, flowing through the body of human- 
ity." 65 

In the system of Bergson the life which 
evolves in virtue of the original impulse is 
regarded as of the psychological order, and 
might otherwise be called mind or spirit. 
Whence, then, does matter come? It cannot 
be said that Bergson makes this clear. He, 
rather, defines what matter is in contrast with 
life than tells how it gets on to the field. He 
describes it as the life movement inverted, 
taking the backward and descending course 

"Creative Evolution, pp. 126, 127. ^Ibid., p. 270. 



HENRI BERGSON 89 

rather than the forward and ascending course, 
merging into necessity rather than into inde- 
termination and liberty. Again he styles it the 
creative action unmaking itself. 66 These are 
the characteristic forms of description. But in 
one connection matter is defined as inter- 
mediate between a thing and a representation. 
"Matter in our view," he says, "is an aggre- 
gate of images. And by image we mean a 
certain existence which is more than that 
which the idealist calls a representation, but 
less than that which the realist calls a thing — 
an existence placed half way between the 
thing and the representation." 67 

Judged by the whole line of his statements, 
Bergson may be said to teach a qualified 
dualism between mind or spirit and matter. 
This is noted by Le Roy in these terms: "Mind 
and matter appear not as two things opposed 
to each other, as static terms in fixed anti- 
thesis; but, rather, as two inverse directions 
of movement; and, in certain respects, we must 
therefore speak not so much of matter or mind 
as of spiritualization and materialization, the 
latter resulting automatically from a simple 
interruption of the former." Le Roy adds, 
citing from Bergson: "Consciousness or super- 

•aibid., pp. 245-257. 

67 Matter and Memory, Introduction, pp. vii, viii. 



90 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

consciousness is the rocket the extinguished 
remains of which fall into matter." 68 

The ascending or life movement, as has been 
noticed, is regarded as creative. Though carry- 
ing along in a sense the old, it is incessantly 
producing the new. Herein lies the essential 
fact of freedom as construed by Bergson. It 
means for him indeterminism, the power of 
reality to transcend antecedents and to add to 
them a veritably new element. To freedom, 
as often conceived, as a power of deliberative 
choice between alternatives, the system of 
Bergson does not seem to be congenially re- 
lated. His rejection of teleology leaves no room 
for affirming freedom in that sense back of 
the evolutionary stream or series of changes 
in the universe. That freedom in the same 
signification — freedom as deliberative choice be- 
tween alternatives — is not accorded by him to 
any agent, human or divine, is made evident by 
this statement: "Free will, in the usual meaning 
of the term, implies the equal possibility of two 
contraries, and on my theory we cannot formu- 
late or even conceive in this case the equal pos- 
sibility of two contraries without falling into a 
gross error about the nature of time." 69 

In his published works in philosophy Bergson 

68 A New Philosophy, p. 109. 

69 Cited by Le Roy, A New Philosophy, pp. 192, 193. 



HENRI BERGSON 91 

takes very scanty pains to pass judgment on 
the theistic idea. He deals, rather, with the 
universe than with God. Judging by the 
tenor of his thinking, it is natural to conclude 
that he designs to leave no other place to the 
thought of God than that of the vital impulse 
or life movement taken in its universal charac- 
ter. In this view God is rather the principle 
of change than above change. He is the soul 
of the ceaseless flux characteristic of reality. 
To use the words of a Bergsonian writer, 
"God has nothing of the ready made; he is 
not perfect in the sense that he is eternally 
complete, that he endures without changing. 
He is unceasing life, action, freedom." 70 A 
formal warrant for this description, it may be 
added, was supplied by Bergson himself in 
publishing a sentence of identical import. 71 

It is to be noticed, however, that our philos- 
opher has penned statements which one might 
take, though scarcely with full confidence, as 
implying that God is not merely the inner 
principle of the universal flux, but holds to 
it a transcendent relation, being the cause of 
both matter and life. These statements are 
contained in letters printed in 1912, and run 
as follows: "The considerations set forth in my 

70 Carr, The Philosophy of Change, pp. 187, 188. 
"Creative Evolution, p. 248. 



92 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness 
are intended to bring to light the fact of liberty; 
those on Matter and Memory touch upon the 
reality of spirit; those in Creative Evolution 
present creation as a fact. From all this 
clearly emerges the idea of a God, creator and 
free; the generator at once of matter and life, 
whose creative efforts as regards life are con- 
tinued through the evolution of species and the 
constitution of human personalities. There re- 
sults a refutation of monism and of pantheism 
in general. But before these conclusions can be 
set out with greater precision, or considered 
at greater length, certain problems of quite an- 
other kind would have to be attacked — the prob- 
lems of ethics. I am not sure that I shall ever 
publish anything on this subject." 72 A Roman 
Catholic writer has added the comment, that, 
while Bergson evidently does not wish to be ac- 
counted a believer in pantheism or monism, his 
premises logically imply these forms of thought. 73 

The foregoing exposition of the distinctive 
features of Bergson's philosophy may serve as 
a basis for a judgment on its validity and 
worth. That it exhibits a large degree of 

72 KalIen, William James and Henri Bergson, p. 196; also 
Ruhe and Paul, Henri Bergson, pp. 43, 44. 

73 J. Maritain, La Philosophic Bergsonienne, pp. 175ff. 



HENRI BERGSON 93 

ingenuity and subtlety and contains not a few 
suggestive points is quite generally admitted. 
At the same time, competent reviewers find it 
open to criticism both in respect of method 
and content. It is our judgment that their 
strictures are by no means groundless. 

Bergson's doctrine of intuition as the select 
instrument of philosophy, the one valid means 
of penetrating to the true nature of reality, is 
far from being proof against objection. His 
exposition of it can hardly claim the merit of 
self -consistency. Generally, he construes it as 
direct vision or mystic insight; yet he defines 
it in one connection as "instinct which has 
become self-conscious and capable of reflecting 
on its object" 74 — a form of statement which 
certainly includes in intuition something be- 
sides direct vision or immediate apprehension. 
Again, while he contrasts intelligence with in- 
tuition, in that the former is directed pre- 
eminently to practical interests, he nevertheless 
speaks of intelligence as furnishing to intuition 
competency to transcend the field of practical 
interests pertaining to instinct. 75 How a fac- 
ulty or activity can help another to a result 
antithetic to its own nature is not clear. This 
breach of consistency has provoked comment. 

74 Creative Evolution, p. 176. 

76 Ibid., pp. 177, 178; Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 43. 



94 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

In the view of Professor Cunningham it "arises 
from a confusion in the author's mind as to 
the nature and function of intellectual knowl- 
edge. He seems to be constantly vacillating 
between two radically different views of the 
intellect and its relation to intuition, without 
any apparent recognition of the fact that he 
entertains more than one doctrine. One of 
these views leads him to depreciate the onto- 
logical value of intelligence, and to draw a 
sharp and absolute distinction between intel- 
ligence and intuition, between science and 
philosophy; while the other view impels him 
to concede some sort of significance to scientific 
knowledge and to assign to intelligence a func- 
tion even within the holy of holies of intuition 
itself. The first view he constantly and ex- 
plicitly emphasizes; the second he seemingly 
unconsciously and implicitly holds." 76 

Viewed as to its dominant aspect, Bergson's 
doctrine of philosophical method is exposed to 
criticism as overrating the function of intuition. 
Doubtless in the process of investigation 
flashes of insight, which outrun the laborious 
efforts of the intellect, do sometimes occur. 
But these are purely incidental, cannot be 
counted on, and cannot be trusted as reliable 
in advance of some form of verification. The 



76 A Study in the Philosophy of Bergson, p. 32, 



HENRI BERGSON 95 

mere possibility of a mental operation akin to 
divination is insufficient warrant for exalting 
that kind of operation to the rank of a central 
factor in philosophical procedure. Of course it 
may be granted that there are certain ele- 
mentary truths of which the mind takes 
cognizance in the way of intuition, and that it 
is as sure about them at first sight as at any 
later period. But these are common to rational 
beings, and necessarily come to recognition, 
formal or implicit, in rational experience. The 
intuition which Bergson postulates is no such 
common property. He puts it in contrast 
with the data of the ordinary understanding, 
rating it as a power or activity which pene- 
trates to the interior of reality and directly 
perceives its nature. It is difficult to realize, 
quickly vanishes, and makes its contribution to 
philosophical insight rather than to practical 
direction. To attach supreme importance to 
anything so exceptional and fugitive seems to 
demand a better warrant than has been fur- 
nished. 

To the point just stated another needs to 
be added. Suppose the philosophical com- 
petency of the Bergsonian intuition to be fully 
granted. What proof can be given that any- 
one has ever come into its possession, or made 
a valid use of it as a philosophical basis? How 



96 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

can Bergson himself afford any satisfactory 
guarantee that intuition, in his sense, has had 
any part in the formation of his own system? 
In that system certain views on the nature of 
reality, as consisting in change, motion, creative 
activity, a process which links past reality 
with an ever-new content, are strongly em- 
phasized. What pledge has he given that 
these views were not reached by simple re- 
flection on certain aspects of reality, especially 
as these are given in self-consciousness, that 
they were not generated by combining the 
concepts of change and identity, of continuity 
and transformation, of necessity and liberty. 
By working with these concepts and with such 
others as are readily suggested by the experi- 
ence of the conscious subject, or by the data 
of evolutionary science, he might have de- 
veloped the given views. The suspicion that 
he proceeded in this way he has absolutely no 
means of excluding. The peculiar intuition out 
of which valid philosophy is supposed to be 
born is not shown to have figured at all. Con- 
fessedly, the intuition has to be translated into 
concepts before it can be expressed, and as 
the rise of the concepts is perfectly conceivable 
apart from the intuition, the existence of the 
latter appears a gratuitous assumption. Noth- 
ing but the subjective impression of the philos- 



HENRI BERGSON 97 

opher vouches for its real occurrence. That 
this is not a solid basis for a philosophy is 
quite apparent. It would take an extraordinary 
consensus of subjective impressions to afford 
to a metaphysical system a secure foundation. 

To criticize Bergson's exaggeration of the 
philosophical virtue of intuition amounts to a 
criticism of his disparagement of the function 
of the intellect or the scope of intelligence. 
He narrows this beyond warrant in giving it 
such a predominant association with the spatial 
domain, the province of physical science. As 
has been well said: "It is not within the sphere 
of physical science alone that intelligence has 
achieved its triumphs. It has, under the 
guidance of the concepts of purpose, of good, 
and of beauty, the meaning of which is as 
clear to it as the concepts of space and of 
quantity, constructed systems of ethics and 
art and religion." 77 

The special charge of Bergson that the in- 
tellect, on account of its affinity with the dis- 
continuous and immobile, cannot understand 
life, and is given to misrepresenting it by its 
concepts, is unjustifiable. Doubtless it is 
needful to be on guard against giving to con- 
cepts an ultra rigidity, in which character they 

77 Stewart, A Critical Exposition of Bergson's Philosophy, 
p. 160. 



98 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

may afford a one-sided view of reality. But 
concepts are not intrinsically disqualified for 
representing the continuity and movement per- 
taining to the living. In rebuttal of Bergson's 
charge we cannot do better than to cite the 
words of Professor Hibben: "The charge is 
made," he says, "against conceptual thinking 
that it cannot portray the continuous. On 
the contrary, it is the peculiar function of 
thought to represent the continuous. Our 
perceptual intelligence does things in frag- 
ments: our conceptual thought integrates 
them into a continuous whole. I may not be 
able to see a process, but I can think it. . . . 
While conceptual thought possesses the analyt- 
ical power of separating a given process into 
elemental parts, into discrete portions of space, 
or separate instants of time, it must not be 
overlooked that it functions also in a synthetic 
capacity, by means of which the connecting 
lines of continuity are established so that the 
mind can hold together the elements of one 
undivided whole." 78 

Bergson's doctrine that change is funda- 
mentally descriptive of reality appears to us 
to be chargeable with a one-sided assertion of 
an important truth. In the actual system 

78 Cited by Wilm, Henri Bergson. A Study of Radical 
Evolutionism, pp. 132, 133. 



HENRI BERGSON 99 

permanency is welded together with change to 
a larger extent than the philosopher takes 
pains to declare. Not only is the past carried 
over into the present of the individual as a 
content or tendency, but the individual knows 
himself as the subject of a long line of expe- 
riences reaching back from the present into 
the past. It is an invincible datum of his 
consciousness that the experiences belonged to 
him, that he had them all. Now, unless this 
characteristic fact of consciousness is to be 
turned into illusion, there must have been a 
subject persisting through the entire line of 
experiences. What is put in evidence is not 
merely a line of separate acts or impressions, 
not merely even a series of acts or impressions 
catching hold of one another in succession in 
some mysterious fashion, but a series of acts 
or impressions related in and through a com- 
mon subject. Bergson's scheme does not do 
justice to the common subject. Taken in its 
trend it overstresses the aspect of change as 
compared with that of permanency. 

On the subject of duration or time viewed 
as flowing, some of Bergson's statements are 
perplexing to the ordinary understanding, not 
to say quite incomprehensible. The notion of 
changes so interrelated that the prior sub- 
sists in some sense in the subsequent is not 



100 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

specially strange. But a question may be 
raised whether changes so interrelated should 
not, rather, be characterized as a condition of 
duration than be identified with duration. An 
author doubtless is to be granted some liberty 
in the use of terms, provided he defines them. 
But to the uninitiated reader it looks like 
Gnosticising mythology when he finds dura- 
tion characterized as the foundation of our 
being, the very substance of the world in which 
we live, 79 or as the creation of forms, the con- 
tinual elaboration of the absolutely new. 80 The 
words of a well-furnished critic seem relevant 
to the connection: "Real change may be the 
condition of the development of our con- 
sciousness of time, but we have no fight to 
affirm that, therefore, real change is identical 
with time." 81 

Bergson's denial, or radical qualification, of 
teleology cannot possibly be acceptable to a 
genuine theist. His scheme, as Professor 
Aliotta remarks, "reduces the universe to a 
perennial stream of forms flowing in no definite 
direction, a shoreless river whose source and 
mouth are alike unknown, deriving the strength 
of its perpetual renewal from some mysterious, 

79 Creative Evolution, p. 39. 80 Ibid., p. 11. 

81 Stewart, A Critical Exposition of Bergson's Philosophy, 
p. 226. 



HENRI BERGSON 101 

blind, and unintelligent impulse of nature, akin 
to the obscure will of Schopenhauer." 82 To 
an unpiloted universe of this sort we prefer 
one planned and directed by supreme wisdom 
and love. 

In ruling out design proper the philosopher 
affords poor standing ground to his own larger 
conceptions — creation, freedom, will. "These 
doubtless are great things," says Balfour, 
"but we cannot lastingly admire them unless 
we know their drift. We cannot, I submit, 
rest satisfied with what differs so little from 
the haphazard; joy is no fitting consequent of 
efforts which are aimless. If values are to be 
taken into account it is surely better to invoke 
God with a purpose than superconsciousness 
with none." 83 

Remark has not infrequently been made on 
the enigmatic character which attaches to 
matter in the system of Bergson. It is defined 
as the inversion of the life movement. But 
what turns back or interrupts this movement? 
Whence comes the inversion? We fail to 
discover. The facing about is as little ex- 
plained as the intrusion of the non-ego in the 
philosophy of Fichte. Matter very likely may 



82 The Idealistic Reaction against Science, p. 128. 
^Cited by Gerrard- Bergson. An Exposition and Crit- 
icism, pp. 157, 158. 



102 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

serve life after a fashion in giving it something 
to battle against. But how can a movement 
be supposed to initiate the opposite of itself. 
To use the words of another: "Whence does 
the original movement derive a direction 
antagonistic to itself? How can the very con- 
tradiction of a force spring from that force? 
How can descent be produced by ascent? 
Again we may note a vicious circle in the 
process. In order that life may ascend it is 
supposed to require matter to enable it to do 
so. Its ascent is a march of conquest. Matter 
is wanted to provide life with problems, the 
solution of which constitutes creative evolu- 
tion. But in order that matter may be thus 
placed at the service of life, life must first 
ascend and become inverted. The ladder is 
upstairs. How shall we get it down." 84 An 
intelligible account of the presence of matter 
would be gained, if an agent should be postu- 
lated beyond both it and the life movement. 
But Bergson's philosophy as a whole ignores 
the supposition of such an agent. If he be 
supposed to entertain the thought of a supreme 
agent, it is undeniable that he makes no use 
of it as a philosopher. 

Notice has been taken in earlier paragraphs 

84 Gerrard, Bergson. An Exposition and Criticism, pp. 
181, 182. 



HENRI BERGSON 103 

of the double fact that Bergson apparently 
makes large account of freedom and con- 
fesses that he does not employ the term in 
the ordinary signification. This confession, in 
our view, amounts to notification of a feature 
in his interpretation of this theme which must 
be regarded as greatly limiting the value of 
his formal commendation of freedom. The sup- 
position that there resides in the life stream a 
phase of indeterminism, a power of projection 
into new and essentially undesigned realiza- 
tions, may be of some interest in the con- 
struction of evolutionary theory. But an argu- 
ment for the ability of a half-blind, or more 
than half-blind, psychical entity to transcend 
given antecedents is not a real contribution 
to the advocacy of personal autonomy. Be- 
lieving that personal autonomy, a power of 
deliberative choice between alternatives, is in- 
dispensable to a worthy conception of freedom, 
we can award only a limited appreciation to 
Bergson's treatment of the subject. 

An implicit judgment on our philosopher's 
attitude toward theism has already been given. 
Doubtless there is a chance to express himself 
much more fully on this subject than he has 
yet done in his writings. It is difficult, however, 
to see how he could do so in a sense favorable 
to genuine theism. The denial of a designed 



104 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

universe involves by itself a rejection of the 
theistic conception as commonly entertained. 

In our estimate of Bergson's system the 
balance has inclined to the side of adverse 
criticism. Not a few of his leading proposi- 
tions fail to commend themselves as valid or 
well-founded. But this should not be taken 
as implying that the study of his philosophy 
is not rewarding. It is adapted to afford a 
good measure of intellectual stimulus. More- 
over it contains valuable points. Bergson 
argues cogently against the theory of mechan- 
ical or physical determination of mental acts. 
In particular his contention for a psychical 
basis of memory, as opposed to an exclusive 
dependence on movements and configurations 
of brain substance, invites appreciation. His 
philosophy as a whole may not afford a con- 
sistent and reliable offset to materialism; but, 
if we may judge by actual results among 
contemporaries, it has a certain adaptation to 
promote the impression that the materialistic 
interpretation of reality is untenable. 



ESSAY IV 
THE NOTION OF A CHANGING GOD 



ESSAY IV ■ 

THE NOTION OF A CHANGING GOD 1 

While sharply contrasted with the trend of 
catholic theology, this notion has won in our 
day an appreciable amount of patronage. It 
has been distinctly advocated by a philosoph- 
ical writer as prominent as Harald Hoffding. 
In his view there is no substantial warrant 
for the supposition, so largely current in 
philosophical as well as theological circles, that 
fundamental being is above the liability to 
change. "Kant's dogmatic assumption," he 
says, "that the thing in itself must be unchange- 
able was not without influence on Herbert 
Spencer, for he, after having shown the validity 
of the concept of evolution within all spheres 
of experience, does not hesitate to deny that 
it can be predicated of the unknowable which, 
according to his teaching, underlies all phenom- 
ena. F. C. Sibbern too, elsewhere an ardent 
evolutionist, assumed that only finite beings, 
not God, undergo development, or, as he ex- 
presses it, God's kingdom develops, but not 
God himself. But we cannot draw the line 



1 This essay and the following are reproduced, with modi- 
fications, from the Methodist Review (New York). 

107 



108 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

in any such external fashion between the 
unknowable and the knowable, or between the 
unchangeable and the changeable. . . . An ab- 
solutely unchangeable ground of continuous 
change is unthinkable. The old difficulty 
returns as soon as we attempt an objective 
conclusion. We have at any rate no right to 
reject the possibility that the inconclusiveness 
of experience and of knowledge may be bound 
up with the fact that being itself is not com- 
plete but is continually developing." 2 In 
another connection Hoffding limits the assump- 
tion of change in God by reference to a law of 
development. "It may be," he remarks, "that 
divine immutability consists in or expresses 
itself in the fact that all change takes place 
according to definite laws, and that the very 
law of development is itself one of the primary 
laws of existence; in which case the contra- 
diction between invariability and variability 
vanishes. The invariable in that case is the 
law of change itself, and where any particular 
law undergoes modification this change will 
always take place in obedience to a higher 
law." 3 

An echo or parallel to the statements of 
Hoffding appears in these words of George 
B. Foster: "We cannot well escape conceiving 

Philosophy of Religion, pp. 67, 68. 3 Ibid., p. 166. 



A CHANGING GOD 109 

of God as 'becoming' and not 'being.' ... It 
belongs to the nature of the Absolute to grow." 4 
In terms scarcely less pronounced Professor 
William James has given expression to the 
notion that the principle of flux applies to 
being universally. "I find no good warrant," 
he says, "for even suspecting the existence of 
any reality of a higher denomination than 
that distributed and strung along, a flowing 
sort of reality which we finite beings swim 
in." 5 Another representative of pragmatism 
declares, "We must interpret being in terms 
of becoming." "Why," he asks, "should we 
attribute to ultimate reality the static char- 
acter of completedness when we regard this 
as indicative of death and decay in our own 
experience ? " 6 

A philosophical writer, who, in present 
notoriety, outranks most, if not all, of the 
preceding, remains to be mentioned. Henri 
Bergson, it is true, has not attempted in his 
published writings to expound the theme of 
the divine nature; but he makes change in- 
trinsic to life, fundamental to the conception 
of reality. Moreover, in at least one instance, 7 

4 The Function of Religion in Man's Struggle for Existence, 
p. 177. 

6 A Pluralistic Universe, p. 212. 

6 H. H. Bawden, The Principles of Pragmatism, p. 306. 

7 Creative Evolution, p. 248. 



110 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

he gives quite unequivocal expression to the 
conviction that God falls under the category 
of change, using, as was observed in the fore- 
going essay, language very nearly identical 
with these words of a stanch English advocate 
of his system: "God has nothing of the ready 
made; he is not perfect in the sense that he 
is eternally complete, that he endures without 
changing. He is unceasing life, creation, 
freedom." 8 

In the passage cited from Hoffding the 
objection to the idea of an immutable God, or 
unchanging Absolute, takes the form of the 
proposition that an unchangeable ground of 
continuous change is unthinkable. So the 
proposition reads. Yet the philosopher, it 
strikes us, proceeds to think the very thing 
declared to be unthinkable. As appears in 
the second of the passages cited, he supposes 
back of changes in ultimate being an invariable 
law directive of all the changes which take 
place. The unchanging law is viewed as 
founding unceasing change. In other words, 
we have a changeless ground of continuous 
change. Thus the original proposition is 
negatived. We have only to posit an immu- 
table agent where Hoffding posits an im- 
mutable law in order to gain the thought of 

8 H. W. Carr, The Philosophy of Change, pp. 187, 188. 



A CHANGING GOD 111 

an immutable God who energizes in the form 
of a mutable world. And why should the 
latter conception be regarded as involving any 
greater difficulty than the former? In both 
cases alike there is supposed a changeless 
ground of change, only in the one case this 
ground is described by the abstract term 
"law," and in the other by the personal term 
"agent." Any one who admits the possibility 
of a changeless law of change has no good 
warrant for challenging the supposition of a 
changeless cause or producer of change. In- 
deed, it seems quite evident that the two forms 
of statement may be taken in an essentially 
identical sense. If, as it certainly may be, 
law is accounted simply the mode of operation 
of an agent, then to speak of unchanging law 
is the same thing as to make mention of an 
agent unchanging as to will or plan of exer- 
cising efficiency. 

Bergson's contention that it belongs to the 
very nature of life to be ever advancing to the 
new, if valid, would obviously block the way 
to faith in the divine immutability. But it 
cannot be seen that the philosopher has given 
substantial proof that his thesis holds in the 
absolute sphere as well as in the domain of 
finitude. His subtle disquisition on the na- 
ture of duration or real time as demanding 



112 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

change — not to say being identical with change 
— even when taken at its face value involves, 
of course, no description of the experience of 
the Absolute so long as it has not been demon- 
strated that the Absolute is subject to the 
time category. In any case it would accord 
ill with metaphysical sobriety to shape the 
conception of ultimate being by a theory of 
time in any wise disputable. 

What has just been said suggests the proper 
answer to the objection based on the incom- 
patibility of completedness with the true ideal 
for man. This objection overlooks the in- 
trinsic distinction between the finite, or con- 
ditioned, and the unconditioned, or absolute. 
Just because man is finite, and cannot 
possibly escape the scale of finitude, it is 
appropriate that he should be everlastingly in 
process. The unconditioned and absolute, as 
such, need not be supposed to be under any 
demand to pursue a fleeing goal. A degree of 
anthropomorphism in formulating our concep- 
tion of God is doubtless legitimate, but an 
anthropomorphism that goes on all fours has 
scanty claims to acceptance. 

That the question of God's timelessness is 
not indifferently related to the assumption of 
his immutability will generally be conceded. 
Even a timeless God may take full account 



A CHANGING GOD 113 

of before and after in the sense of logical con- 
secution, and must understand what time is 
for human experience; but plainly there is no 
occasion to think of him as being carried 
forward in any sort of evolution such as we 
contemplate in the sphere of time measures. 
As above time he is out of reach of temporal 
change. Temporal change may follow as a 
resultant of his activity, since that activity 
may originate beings whose life is partitive 
and therefore attended by a sense of suc- 
cession; but the activity itself need not be 
regarded as subject to temporal change. So 
have thought many of the world's greatest 
thinkers. Doubtless to follow out this point 
of view is likely to afflict our imagination and 
even to trouble our thinking not a little. The 
difficulties, however, which pertain to it may 
be regarded as originating mostly in a rather 
pertinacious tendency to carry over to the 
Absolute the mode of our finite consciousness. 
Thus we are inclined to suppose that a God 
who has an indivisible grasp of reality, who 
does not advance from one event or outlook 
to another, is condemned to a static condition. 
But we should remind ourselves that if God 
is really above time, if for him there is no 
time in which to loiter around and grow weary 
of a constant program, then there is no expe- 



114 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

rience in him of the long-drawn-out sameness 
that our overhasty imagination is given to 
depicting. We should also remind ourselves 
that difficulties of no small moment result 
from an attempt to bring God under the time 
category. From this point of view there is 
occasion to ask about the age of God; and if 
it be answered that he is an infinite number 
of years old the warrant for the idea of a 
realized infinite number comes at once into 
question. Other perplexing inquiries can be 
propounded, so that the one who reflects upon 
them seriously might find a motive to be 
reconciled to the thought of God's timeless- 
ness, and to welcome the guarantee which it 
affords of his superiority to temporal change. 

Even apart from appeal to the strict time- 
lessness of God it is possible to hold a stanch 
doctrine of his immutability. He can be 
represented as the logical prius of the universe 
of creatures; as the indispensable ground of 
the continuance of that universe in being; 
as knowing all that is truly knowable; as 
having a will devoted to righteous and benev- 
olent ends in a degree proportionate to his 
knowledge and power; in other words, as being 
indefectible in goodness. Against the ascrip- 
tion of such attributes to him it is quite certain 
that no speculative foreclosure can be urged, 



A CHANGING GOD 115 

and the ascription is not only agreeable to the 
demands of piety, but also to the demands of 
the logic which is not minded to get something 
out of nothing, or to go in the face of the 
principle of sufficient cause. One limitation, it 
must be admitted, would have to be imputed 
to the God thus defined. As being placed 
under the time category, he would not be 
able, so far as we can conceive, to cognize those 
contingent events which, to use our form of 
description, are still future. His knowledge, 
therefore, could not be absolutely inclusive, if 
any events properly characterized as contingent 
are actually to take place. But this fact does 
not necessitate the supposition of any real 
change in God's feeling, purpose, or plan of 
administration. In the transcendent scope of 
his wisdom and power and the measureless 
depth of his righteous determination he would 
be able to meet every exigency which might 
arise without the slightest perturbation or the 
least wavering in principle. So even apart 
from the affirmation of strict timelessness the 
character of essential immutability can be 
ascribed to God. 

Something of an argument might be made 
out for the stability of God even on the sup- 
position that at the start he was not above 
the scale of finitude and was confronted by an 



116 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

already existing world-stuff. If time reaches 
back in a measureless regress, and God be 
viewed as contemporary with every section of 
time, then he must have had an immeasurable 
period of years in which to try out his scheme, 
and may well be thought at the present to 
have brought it to a very respectable pitch of 
maturity and fixedness. But it is not worth 
while to attempt to enforce this point of view. 
The given conception of God — as is also that 
which makes him simply the blindly working 
ground of the evolutionary movement — is just 
about on a level with atheism. It neither 
solicits to worship nor invites to confidence. 
A finite entity, which is not supported by a 
true infinite, may conceivably reach a cul- 
mination and thereafter follow the path of 
deterioration. So practically runs the story of 
a mythological deity in more than one instance. 
Not being under any good speculative re- 
quirement to assume that God is in real flux, 
we find sufficient ground for repudiating that 
assumption in view of its untoward implica- 
tions. A God who is worthy of the name must 
be regarded as fundamental to the entire world 
order. If he may be supposed to work in an 
inconstant and self-contradictory manner, the 
foundations of intellectual confidence are dis- 
rupted. One whose God is in process of making 



A CHANGING GOD 117 

might possibly be brave enough to hope for 
a good outcome to the system of things; but 
in a rational point of view he walks on insecure 
ground. Indeed, the words cited from Hoffding 
invite him to use the postulate of a changing 
God as a complete basis for incertitude, an 
explanation of the "inconclusiveness of expe- 
rience and of knowledge." 

Our discussion brings us to this conclusion: 
There is nothing in the domain of valid specu- 
lations which compels us to forego a stanch 
doctrine of divine immutability. In the ab- 
sence of such compulsion it would be folly to 
renounce the doctrine, since we cannot give 
it up without the sacrifice of great interests 
of intellect and heart. Our confidence can 
obtain firm anchorage only in the thought of 
One who is the same yesterday, to-day, and 
forever. 



ESSAY V 

ATTEMPTS TO DISPENSE WITH 
THE SOUL 



ESSAY V 

ATTEMPTS TO DISPENSE WITH 
THE SOUL 

It is far from our purpose to give an in- 
ventory of such attempts. A few notable in- 
stances will supply adequate occasion to bring 
out all important considerations which have 
figured in the attempts or which may be urged 
in opposition to them. Among recent writers, 
as it has seemed to us, two in particular, Wil- 
liam James and Ernst Mach, can be utilized 
for a fairly comprehensive unfoldment of our 
theme. 

Professor James was not uniformly and un- 
qualifiedly committed to an exclusion of the 
soul, the abiding self, or spiritual agent, as 
distinctive of the individual man. Still, he 
counted it legitimate and advisable in a fore- 
most treatise to proceed on the basis of that 
exclusion. In the preface to his Principles of 
Psychology he reprobates the intrusion of meta- 
physics into the domain of psychology, and 
makes evident his conviction that the theory 
of a "spiritual agent" is an alien factor in 
psychological discussion impertinently trans- 
ferred from the metaphysical realm. Quite 
121 



122 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

naturally, what he shuts the door against in 
psychology he has shown no real ambition to 
install anywhere else. 

As a psychologist Professor James finds no 
compelling reason for postulating a soul, or 
spiritual agent. What, then, we are led to 
inquire, does he put in place of the soul? 
What in his scheme provides for the con- 
tinuity and unity of the mental life? Described 
in brief, the substitute which James brings 
forward for the soul, or abiding self, is the 
present thought or pulse of consciousness 
viewed as appropriating or rejecting the pre- 
ceding thought or pulse of consciousness, and 
as effecting acts of discrimination or com- 
parison on the terms thus brought into con- 
junction. Referring to our consciousness of 
personal identity, he remarks: "Such con- 
sciousness, as a psychologic fact, can be fully 
described without supposing any other agent 
than a succession of perishing thoughts, en- 
dowed with the functions of appropriation and 
rejection, and of which some can know and 
appropriate or reject objects known, appro- 
priated, or rejected by the rest." 1 

Again our psychologist observes: "The pass- 
ing thought, then, seems to be the thinker; and 
though there may be another nonphenomenal 

1 Principles of Psychology, I, pp. 341, 342. 



THE SOUL 123 

thinker behind that, so far we do not seem to 
need him to express the facts" (I, p. 342). 
Once more he avers: "The knowledge the 
present feeling has of the past ones is a real 
tie between them; so is their resemblance; 
so is their continuity; so is the one's appro- 
priation of the other; all are realities, realized 
in the judging thought of every moment, the 
only place where disconnections could be real- 
ized, did they exist. . . . My present thought 
stands in the plenitude of ownership of the 
train of my past selves, is owner not only 
de facto, but de jure, and all without the sup- 
position of any 'inexplicable tie,' but in a per- 
fectly verifiable and phenomenal way. . . . There 
need never have been a quarrel between 
associationalism and its rivals, if the former 
had admitted the indecomposable unity of 
every pulse of thought, and the latter had 
been willing to allow that perishing pulses of 
thought might recollect and know" (I, pp. 
360, 371). 

The above statements seem quite definitely 
opposed to the postulate of a real soul or 
unitary abiding self. But, on the other hand, 
Professor James may be regarded as affording 
directly or indirectly very good standing 
ground for that postulate. In one connection 
his words read like a declaration, not merely 



124 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

of its admissibility, but also to a surprising 
degree of its probable truth. He says: "The 
plain fact is that all the arguments for a 'pon- 
tifical cell' or an 'arch-monad' are also argu- 
ments for that well-known spiritual agent in 
which scholastic psychology and common sense 
have always believed. ... If there be such 
entities as souls in the universe, they may 
possibly be affected by the manifold occur- 
rences that go on in the nervous centers. 
To the state of the entire brain at a given 
moment they may respond by inward modifica- 
tions of their own. These changes of state 
may be pulses of consciousness cognitive of 
objects, few or many, simple or complex. The 
soul would be thus a medium upon which 
(to use our earlier phraseology) the manifold 
brain processes combine their effects. Not need- 
ing to consider it as the 'inner aspect' of any 
such arch molecule or brain cell, we escape 
that physiological improbability; and as the 
pulses of consciousness are unitary and integral 
affairs from the outset, we escape the ab- 
surdity of supposing feelings which exist sep- 
arately and then 'fuse together' by themselves. 
The separateness is in the brain-world on this 
theory and the unity in the soul-world; and 
the only trouble that remains to haunt us is 
the metaphysical one of understanding how one 



THE SOUL 125 

sort of world or existent thing, can affect or 
influence another at all. This trouble, however, 
since it exists inside of both worlds and in- 
volves neither physical improbability nor log- 
ical contradiction, is relatively small. I con- 
fess, therefore, that to posit a soul influenced 
in some mysterious way by the brain states 
and responding to them by conscious affec- 
tions of its own, seems to me to be the line 
of least resistance, so far as we have yet at- 
tained" (I, p. 181). 

Fairness requires that the limitation con- 
tained in the last clause of the citation be not 
overlooked. In what follows, the Professor 
sees fit, on the score of economy, to drop the 
postulate of the soul, and to put in its place 
that marvelously endowed thought or pulse of 
consciousness which we have taken pains to 
describe in his own words. Since, however, 
the economy or intellectual sobriety of such a 
procedure may readily be challenged, as will 
hereafter appear, the paragraph just cited may 
be rated as a substantial concession to the 
common theory of the unitary abiding self, or 
soul. 

A second concession to the same theory is 
rendered by the Professor's acknowledgment 
that thought appears to us to subsist not by 
itself, but always in association with a personal 



126 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

subject, and, indeed, as the function or pos- 
session of that subject. "It seems," he ob- 
serves, "as if the elementary psychic fact were 
not thought or this thought, or that thought, but 
my thought, every thought being owned .... 
The universal conscious fact is not 'feelings 
and thoughts exist,' but T think,' and 'I feel.' 
No psychology, at any rate, can question the 
existence of personal selves. The worst a 
psychology can do is so to interpret the nature 
of these selves as to rob them of their worth" 
(I, p. 226). 

This is an acknowledgment of great import. 
The fact that thought is not isolated, but is 
ever wrapped up with the consciousness of a 
relation to a self or owner, makes it impossible 
to challenge the reality of the self without 
assailing the trustworthiness or reliability of a 
constant characteristic of our mental experi- 
ence. 

A third concession is contained implicitly, 
if not explicitly, in the Professor's declared 
faith in the possession of free will by man. 
It is true that he counts psychological investi- 
gation incompetent to settle the question of 
free will. The ground of an affirmative de- 
cision he finds rather in the sphere of ethical 
philosophy than in psychology proper. But, 
on whatever grounds, his verdict is given in 



THE SOUL 127 

favor of free will. 2 Possibly in some connec- 
tions he may have afforded occasion for a 
suspicion that he puts a limitation upon 
freedom like that admitted by Bergson, and 
is rather disposed to contend for spontaneity 
than for proper alternativity. But, as his 
words stand, since he indulges in a polemic 
against fatalism and claims a place for possi- 
bility as against necessity, he figures as an 
advocate of free will. Now, to accept free 
will is logically to accentuate the idea of man 
as a true agent. It is to credit man with a 
genuine causality; and, since causality is the 
root idea of substance, it is to rate him as a 
substantial subject. Professor James, accord- 
ingly, in his acceptance of free will, renders 
a very appreciable tribute to the theory of 
a substantial soul or personal agent. 

At this point the conviction may well in- 
sinuate itself that Professor James has not 
succeeded in keeping to the purely psycholog- 
ical point of view. The sense of personal 
ownership, which he admits goes with every 
passing thought, is a capital psychological fact, 
and carries the conclusion that in the psy- 
chological point of view, thought is a function 
of the self. On the other hand, it is no ascer- 

2 The Will to Believe and Other Essays, pp. 218, 237, 238, 
245; Some Problems of Philosophy, pp. 138-149. 



128 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

tained psychological fact that the "pulse of 
thought," or the "succession of perishing 
thoughts," which is put in place of the self, 
or ego, performs or can perform all the func- 
tions that need to be ascribed to it in order 
to make out the chosen theory. No one has 
ever observed the pulse of thought exercising 
the power of memory, 3 the power of volition, 
the power to transfer to its successor the sense 
of continuity or individual persistence. So far 
as customary speech is a testimony to facts 
of consciousness it furnishes the reverse of a 
certificate for the actual exercise of the powers 
in question by the pulse of thought. No man is 
prompted to say in description of his expe- 
rience, "Thought remembers, thought wills, 
thought in its swift flight gives over to its 
successor a sense of continuity." Contrariwise 
every man, learned or unlearned, affirms 
spontaneously, "I remember, I will, 7 abide 
the same person in successive days and years." 
In short, it is as clear as the sunlight that 
the Professor's theory is not yielded by plain 
psychological data. It is unmistakably a meta- 
physical assumption; and it is a very unlikely 
piece of metaphysics. If a metaphysical entity 
is to be brought in, it would seem to be appro- 

* On the requisites to an act of memory, see below in com- 
ments on Mach's theories. 



THE SOUL 129 

priate to bring in one which provides for the 
various functions that must be acknowledged, 
not one which in the current vocabulary 
stands for a single function. Nor is this de- 
ficit the only trouble with the metaphysical 
postulate which is adopted. The role which 
that postulate assigns to the pulse of thought 
impinges against what looks like a downright 
impossibility. How can the evanescent thought 
of the moment get into connection with the 
antecedent thought in the way of combination 
or discrimination? When the one has arrived 
the other has departed, and departed in its 
entirety, being by supposition an "indecom- 
posable unity." Can, then, the existent effect 
a real relation with the nonexistent? To the 
best of our apprehension the units in a suc- 
cession of flashlights furnish by themselves no 
intelligible notion of interconnection. 

We conclude that the genial and accom- 
plished Professor would have shown superior 
discretion had he treated the idea of a soul 
or abiding personal subject not merely as a 
notion to which a degree of tolerance may be 
awarded, but as a necessary postulate. We 
have to deal with a multiform power, a causal- 
ity that is capable of varied manifestations, a 
subject that knows itself as persisting through 
long series of experiences. We are simply 



130 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

making our theory respond to the demands 
of the facts when we postulate a soul, a unitary 
self, that through all changes retains a basis 
of identity. The installing of this postulate 
is no result of a careless hypostasizing of some 
phase of experience. The postulate is de- 
manded for a satisfactory account of expe- 
rience in its totality. 

A theory more resolutely antagonistic than 
that of Professor James to the conception of 
a soul or unitary abiding self has been cham- 
pioned by Professor Ernst Mach, of the' Uni- 
versity of Vienna. In his inventory of reality 
absolutely nothing comes into view but com- 
binations or complexes of what in one set 
of connections are termed "elements," and in 
another set of connections are designated 
"sensations." To the complexes belong such 
constituents as colors, tones, temperatures, 
weights, spaces, and times. These can be 
rated with equal propriety as belonging either 
to the physical or to the psychical domains, 
since there is no strict antithesis between the 
physical and the psychical. The distinction 
between the two is only a matter of relation 
or viewpoint. The same element which, con- 
sidered in relation to other elements in the 
environment, belongs to the physical range 
pertains to the psychical range when viewed 



THE SOUL 131 

in relation to the sense organs. Mach observes : 
"A color is a physical object so long as we 
consider its dependence upon its luminous 
source, upon other colors, upon heat, upon 
space, etc. When, however, we regard its 
dependence upon the retina it becomes a 
psychological object, a sensation. Not the 
subject, but the direction of our investigation 
is different in the two domains." 4 

Again our author remarks: "When I in- 
vestigate the dependence of A as a given part 
of the environment upon B as another part 
of the environment, I am cultivating physics; 
if I investigate how far A is modified by a 
change of the sense organ or the central nervous 
system of a living being, I cultivate psychology" 
(p. 42). What we have, then, is not two 
diverse orders of constituents in the world 
system, but one order. Reality is made up of 
shifting complexes of elements which we may 
rate either as sensations or as physical entities, 
according to the relation in which they are 
viewed. "The whole inner and the whole 
outer world are composed of a few elements 
of like character, now in more transient, now 
in more stable combination" (pp. 17, 18). 

The place which, in such a scheme, must 

4 Die Analyse der Empfindungen und das Verhaltniss deg 
Physischeq zum Psychischen, p. J4, 



132 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

be assigned to the self, or ego, is quite apparent. 
At most it can be construed only as a rela- 
tively stable complex of sensations, just as a 
solid body is a relatively stable complex of 
such elements as color, weight, etc. As a prac- 
tical makeshift the ego may have no little 
importance. In dealing with bodies and avoid- 
ing occasions of pain and damage a man may 
get along best by visualizing himself as some- 
thing distinct from his environment. But in 
strictly scientific contemplation it is necessary 
to renounce this proceeding. "The opposition 
between ego and world, sensation or phenom- 
enon and thing, falls then away, and we have 
to do merely with a combination of elements" 
(pp. 9, 10). 

The apparent simplicity of Professor Mach's 
scheme might tell in its favor were it charac- 
terized by an equal intelligibility and con- 
gruity with the facts which need to be recog- 
nized. But this is by no means the case. On 
the contrary, very serious difficulties emerge 
as one attempts to look into the scheme. In 
the first place, it is hard to understand the 
Professor's way of distinguishing sensations 
from, and at the same time essentially identi- 
fying them with, the elements or constituents 
which make up the world of bodies. These 
elements surely are revealed only in sensation, 



THE SOUL 133 

and revealed only in combinations, or as per- 
taining to bodies; in other words as con- 
stituents of the complexes which we name 
bodies. But, according to the Professor, 
bodies are but thought symbols (p. 23). So the 
sense-organs, as falling evidently under the 
category of bodies, need to be rated as thought 
symbols. What, then, happens when an 
element is viewed in relation to a sense-organ? 
Manifestly, according to the given data, a 
constituent in a thought symbol is viewed in 
relation to a particular thought symbol. Now, 
since an element viewed in relation to a sense- 
organ is declared to be a sensation, it results 
that a sensation denotes a constituent (or 
possibly a plurality of constituents) of a 
thought symbol viewed in relation to a par- 
ticular thought symbol. We submit that this 
is not a specially illuminating definition of 
sensation. Then, too — and here the major 
emphasis falls — it seems to contain an implicit 
contradiction of the author's position, since it 
implies the need of a subject which, as standing 
above both element and sense organ, can view 
them in relation to one another. In the ab- 
sence of an ego, or true agent, what is to 
perform this feat? It looks as though the 
attempt to reduce all reality to shifting com- 
plexes of elements which are distinguished 



134 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

from sensations only by point of view is self- 
canceling. That which takes the point of 
view is rationally to be considered as in some 
true sense above the terms compared and not 
sunk in the one or the other. 

Again, Professor Mach is too easy-going in 
his attempt to account for such continuity in 
the experience of the individual as must in all 
candor be recognized. He deems that on this 
subject it suffices to speak of relatively stable 
sensations, which as enduring for considerable 
periods, give a certain continuity to experience 
and so provide for the sense of personal identity. 
Herein the Professor seems to overlook the 
actual facts about sensations. They change 
with exceeding swiftness. No one can tell 
how many transformations may, and com- 
monly do, take place in a single moment. 
It is only by confounding likeness with identity 
that one can find license to speak of sensations 
as continuous for even a very brief interval. 
The sensation of this day, hour, or moment 
may be like the sensation of the preceding 
day, hour, or moment; but this does not 
make the one identical with the other any 
more than the ticking of a clock at a given 
second is identical with the ticking at a pre- 
ceding second. If there is no other subject 
than a complex of sensations, then there is 



THE SOUL 135 

no subject that persists for a single hour, not 
to say for a single moment. The Professor, 
therefore, in speaking of what he said or 
thought thirty years before the time of writing, 
used language quite unwarranted in the point 
of view of his own theory. Without the abid- 
ing self the sense of continuous personal iden- 
tity is an unmitigated illusion. 

Once more the Professor makes too light a 
task of explaining memory. Suppose we should 
grant that his postulates may provide for 
the possibility that one set of sensations or 
elements should affect a succeeding set, through 
the passing over of one or another constituent 
of the prior set to the following; even then we 
should be far from any intelligible explanation 
of memory. In memory, as we know it, there 
is at once an act of distinction and an act of 
identification, the recalled experience being 
distinguished from the present and being iden- 
tified as an experience of the same subject 
to whom the present experience pertains. The 
continuance of some element in experience be- 
yond a given line is not an instance of memory ; 
neither is the occurrence of an experience 
similar to another an instance of memory. 
For memory proper there must be the double 
act of distinction and identification. And 
what is equal to this task except a true ego, 



136 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

a unitary personal agent? On the ground that 
sensations are the whole sum of psychical 
reality the most distinctive features of memory 
become utterly enigmatic. 

In justifying his exclusion of the ego Pro- 
fessor Mach makes the contention that the 
analogy of the world may serve to teach us 
that such a uniting bond is not necessary. 
"A variously interconnected content of con- 
sciousness," he says, "is in no respect more 
difficult to understand than a diversified inter- 
connection of the world" (pp. 22, 23). In 
answer it may be affirmed that the unity of 
personality connotes features, like that of 
memory or continuous self-identification, which 
cannot be asserted of any physical unity or 
assemblage of elements in the external world. 
Moreover, it is to be noted that the granting 
of the Professor's contention in no wise dis- 
penses with the demand for an ego. Inter- 
connection in the sphere of the world gets an 
adequate explanation only by reference to a 
unitary spiritual Agent who includes all things 
in his omnipresent energy. By reference to 
this interconnection, therefore, it is not possi- 
ble to nullify the demand for making unity 
in the sphere of consciousness dependent on 
the subsistence of a unitary personal subject. 

One further attempt of Professor Mach to 



THE SOUL 137 

qualify the need of postulating the ego or 
unitary self may be noticed. He refers to 
lapses of self-consciousness, or instances of 
alienation from the customary sense of per- 
sonal identity, as properly reducing our em- 
phasis on the unity of the individual. Doubt- 
less some strange disturbances of normal self- 
consciousness are on record. But what do 
they prove? Do they demonstrate that such 
cardinal functions of a rational being as judg- 
ing, comparing, combining, discriminating, and 
remembering can be explained apart from the 
supposition of a unitary persisting subject? 
Not at all. They do not go a step toward 
proving that anything less than a unitary 
subject is capable of these functions. They 
simply show that some disturbing cause may 
so interfere with one or another of the func- 
tions as to impair or interrupt the sense of 
personal identity — a result not greatly to be 
wondered at in consideration of the commonly 
admitted truth that abnormal bodily conditions 
may give rise to abnormal mental impressions. 
Moreover, the very fact that the disturbance 
of the sense of personal identity is in all scientific 
verdicts pronounced pathological is on the side 
of the reality of the persisting self-identical 
subject. The plain inference is that, if only 
the disturbing cause were removed, the prior 



138 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

or customary type of self-consciousness would 
return. But if true self-knowledge may be 
recovered, the true self, the abiding personality, 
must rationally be supposed to be existent. 
Our judgment, then, is that Professor Mach 
fails here, as well as elsewhere, to furnish any 
adequate grounds for rejecting the great cath- 
olic belief in the soul or unitary self. 

That the attempt of the Vienna Professor to 
expel the ego should fail to justify itself can be 
no cause of surprise to the diligent student of 
philosophical thinking. The attempt of a pre- 
decessor whom he acknowledges as a true fore- 
runner, though executed with an ingenuity 
quite equal to that of any later advocate of 
the sensational philosophy, was far from being 
successful. In spite of the extraordinary genius 
and subtlety which David Hume brought to 
the task of explaining experience apart from 
the recognition of the unitary self, he was 
under compulsion virtually to grant that 
recognition in more than one connection. A 
striking instance is contained in the following 
sentences of the philosopher: "For my part, 
when I enter most intimately into what I call 
myself, I always stumble on some particular 
perception or other — of heat or cold, light or 
shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I 
never catch myself at any time without a 



THE SOUL 139 

perception, and never can observe anything 
but the perception." 5 Now, even a cursory 
analysis of this statement reveals how the 
writer implicitly affirms what he formally 
denies. The self as stumbling on the percep- 
tion is present with the perception. The self 
never, indeed, catching itself without a per- 
ception, but always catching itself with a per- 
ception — since it is the self which is said to 
observe the perception — is ever on hand with 
the perception. 6 In truth, the passage in full 
contradiction of its intent, might be employed 
to illustrate how unmistakably any experience 
connotes the self and can be severed there- 
from only by an arbitrary process of abstraction. 
Hume in search for the self has been com- 
pared to the man who, having gone out of his 
house and looked in at the window, concluded, 
since he did not see himself in the vacant room, 
that he was not to be found. Obviously, it was 
not wise for the man at the window to look for 
himself apart from the self that was looking. 
So Hume made a blunder in severing himself 
from the self that was looking, or in trying to 
find the self aside from the experiences with 
which it is indissolubly joined as their owner 
and through which it is revealed. 

5 Works, edited by Green, I, p. 534. 

6 Compare Robert Flint, Agnosticism, pp. 150, 151. 



140 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

Other passages in Hume could be used to 
illustrate faulty procedures in his reasoning. 
As Andrew Seth (Pringle-Pattison) points out, 
Hume, in ascribing an uniting function to 
memory and to imagination, makes the one 
and the other to serve as a kind of soul or 
ego. 7 As Thomas Hill Green in his painstaking 
criticism shows, the Scottish philosopher makes 
shift to sustain his sensational postulates only 
by resort to conceptions which transcend those 
postulates and implicitly contradict them. 
"The mere occurrence," he says, "of similar 
feelings is with him already that relation in 
the way of resemblance which in truth only 
exists for a subject that can contemplate them 
as permanent objects. In like manner the 
succession of feelings, which can only con- 
stitute time for a subject that contrasts the 
succession with its own unity, and which, if 
ideas were feelings, would exclude the possi- 
bility of an idea of time, is yet with him in- 
differently time and the idea of time, though 
ideas are feelings and there is no mind but 
their succession." 8 

It is a fair induction from history that the 
penalty of self-contradiction, which was paid 

7 Scottish Philosophy. A Comparison of the Scottish and 
German Answers to Hume, pp. 62, 63. 
"Green, Works, I, p. 271. 



THE SOUL 141 

by Hume in his attempt to negate the unitary 
abiding self, cannot be escaped altogether by 
anyone who engages in the like attempt. John 
Stuart Mill was not able to avoid the penalty, 
and confessed as much when he admitted 
that the reduction of the mind to a mere 
series of feelings issues in the paradox that 
a series — one term of which is gone when the 
next arrives — can be aware of itself as past 
and future. 9 Herbert Spencer had to pay the 
penalty. He virtually assumed the unitary 
agent in his effort to explain the genesis of 
the mental content. 10 In like manner he in- 
truded that agent when, being hard pressed by 
the task of escaping sheer idealism, he found 
a guarantee of the existence of objective 
reality in the fact of our energy being resisted 
by an energy not our own. 11 Plainly, an 
energy conscious of being resisted is an energy 
conscious of activity, a true ego, or self. It 
is that or it is an illusion. In the latter case 
it could not, of course, give any trustworthy 
certification of the subsistence of external 
reality. 

It was noticed that Professor Mach assumes 
that there is no intrinsic distinction between 



'Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, p. 213. 

10 Green, Works, I, p. 438. 

"Bowne, Metaphysics, pp. 319, 320. 



142 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

subject and object, that any seeming diversity 
between them is due to the different points 
from which they are respectively contemplated; 
that, in fact, they are complexes of like ele- 
ments. Professor James, in some of his later 
essays, 12 was equally outspoken for the thesis 
that subject and object, thought and thing, 
are perfectly homogeneous in nature. Now, 
we are ready to pay all due respect to the 
humility of the thinker who abnegates all 
claims to superiority, and rates himself as 
entirely homogeneous with the chair upon 
which he sits, with the food which he eats, 
with the coal which he shovels into his furnace, 
and with all the other things in the world of 
things. But the excentricity of the proposition 
is so arresting that it is very difficult properly 
to value the humility which it may imply. 
It is our conviction that it would require a 
miracle of grace, or some other kind of miracle, 
to enable a man practically to appropriate this 
order of self-estimate. The impression as to 
the uniqueness of personality is deeply im- 
bedded in human consciousness. Man knows 
the world of things as instrumental to himself. 
To ask him to rate himself as being right in 
line with mere things is to ask the practically 
impossible; and the practically impossible has 

12 Essays in Radical Empiricism, 



THE SOUL 143 

very little claim to be regarded as the theoret- 
ically valid. Were the supposed feat possible, 
it would not be likely to endure well the prag- 
matic test of consequences. The theoretical 
flattening down of the conception of person- 
ality, provided it should penetrate to the 
habitual feelings, could hardly fail to work 
prejudicially. 

If asked to explain the ego, we should need 
to reply that it is known through its workings, 
and is too fundamental to be satisfactorily 
defined by reference to aught else. Complete 
description is not to be expected. "As well 
might one," remarks Professor George H. 
Palmer, "ask an ultimate analysis of space and 
time. Descriptions of the functions and pe- 
culiarities of all three are possible enough, but 
neither can be resolved into anything more 
elementary than itself. Being employed each 
instant of our lives as conditions of appre- 
hending all else, they cannot themselves be 
separately apprehended; nor on the same 
account can they be dispensed with. He who 
attempts to deny a personal self really implies 
its existence in the very denial. Experience 
involves an experiencer. We cannot say that 
we are aware only of mental states without 
introducing somebody who is aware and set- 
ting up a doctrine of personality the very 



144 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

opposite of that which is asserted." 13 This 
judgment, we are confident, will ever commend 
itself to common sense. The ultra phenom- 
enalism which construes phenomena as appear- 
ances of nothing to nobody is sadly lacking 
in credibility. 



13 The Problem of Freedom, pp. 74, 75. 



ESSAY VI 

DOCTRINAL VALUES CONTRIBUTED 
BY THE REFORMATION 



ESSAY VI 

DOCTRINAL VALUES CONTRIBUTED 
BY THE REFORMATION 1 

I. Rating of the Theme 
The tenor of remarks not infrequently 
heard in our day might lead one to suppose 
that doctrines, especially those whose his- 
tory dates back several centuries, are of too 
little account to deserve serious consideration. 
Occasionally, doctrines which the common 
judgment of mankind has pronounced the most 
undeniable and indispensable have been treated 
as worthy of the scrap-heap. Quite recently 
a writer of some note made a very subtle 
attempt to convince the public that even the 
belief in the existence of a personal God and 
in the fact of the immortal life could appro- 
priately be reckoned among things indifferent 
and be cast off without regret. When carried 
to this extreme, disparagement of doctrine 
stands an excellent chance of being self-defeat- 
ing. Very few people, capable of sober re- 
flection, can be convinced that it is a matter 



1 Printed originally in Zion's Herald on the occasion of the 
four hundredth anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, 
147 



148 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

of i \difference to turn the heavens into a 
somber, soulless expanse by stripping them of 
the irradiating presence of an ideal Personality, 
a Father who plans for his children on the 
scale of his infinite might and benevolence. 
Equally small is the percentage of people, 
sanely awake to their own interests, who can 
be persuaded that it is a matter of no conse- 
quence whether the road which the human 
race individually and collectively is pursuing, 
ends with a plunge into the night of an eternal 
blank, or contrariwise goes on to the bright 
scenes, the holy fellowships, and the lofty 
activities of an eternal kingdom. An ultra- 
radical procedure, like this partly veiled attack 
upon the foremost articles of the Christian 
faith, is not the kind of disparagement of 
doctrine on which we deem it appropriate, in 
this preliminary article, to invite a judicial 
verdict. 

What we have in mind is the habit, so widely 
current, to disparage the worth of doctrines 
by placing them in antithesis to experience 
and life. The habit in some instances is born 
of a short-sighted and miscalculating sentimen- 
talism; in other instances it is indicative of 
scarcely more than a careless omission of con- 
ditions which there is no serious intention to 
deny. However explained, the habit of de- 



I 



DOCTRINAL VALUES 149 

crying doctrines as compared with experience 
and life is very much in evidence. 

Were the contentions simply that no pro- 
fession of doctrine can compensate for a bad 
life and a poverty-stricken experience, or that, 
in many instances, a good experience and life 
may be conjoined with doctrines that seem to 
the observer to be quite defective, no complaint 
could be made. Indeed, it belongs to normally 
conceived doctrine emphatically to assert that 
much. The objection lies against reiterated 
forms of expression which are suited to convey 
the impression that doctrines have no bearing 
on experience and life, at least none that is 
at all noteworthy. 

This impression deserves to be challenged 
and expelled. Taken in the limited view, 
doctrines may not be seen to work themselves 
out into corresponding fruits. But they have 
an intrinsic tendency in that direction, and 
in the absence of powerful counteracting in- 
fluences, they are quite certain, if seriously 
entertained, to give evidence ere long of their 
formative influence over experience and life. 
In face of the world tragedy which has re- 
cently confronted us, who can doubt that a 
stalwart militaristic creed, insistently prop- 
agated, can generate, right in the midst of 
civilization, forms of national self-assertion 



150 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

which outdistance the atrocities of the most 
barbarous times? Before the testimony of 
thoroughly authenticated history, such, for ex- 
ample, as comes to expression in the records 
of the Spanish Inquisition, who can question 
that the doctrine of ecclesiastical infallibility, 
combined with its congenial corollary on the 
obligatory subserviency of temporal to spiritual 
authority, can perpetuate for generations a most 
inhuman and merciless despotism? Turning 
to an historic illustration of a different char- 
acter, who will make bold to deny that the 
transforming efficacy of the message of Jesus 
was due largely to the superlative doctrines 
which it contained? That message was shot 
through with great theological conceptions, con- 
ceptions not dictated by simple ethics, but 
adapted to serve as a vital breath to ethical 
conviction, and to work potently for the crea- 
tion of the sweetest charities which can amelior- 
ate the lot or glorify the lives of men. It was 
practically mighty, because it was theoretically 
sound, balanced, and deep-reaching, true to 
the nature of God and to the wants of men. 
In it we have an imperishable lesson on the 
function of doctrine, not as being antithetic 
to life, or indifferently related thereto, but as 
efficiently ministering to life. Phillips Brooks 
was giving a faithful republication of that 



DOCTRINAL VALUES 151 

lesson when he wrote, "No exhortation to a 
good life that does not put behind it some 
truth as deep as eternity can seize and hold 
the conscience." 

By all means let it be required of doctrines 
that they substantiate their claims to hos- 
pitality. Let them never be pushed beyond 
the warrant of accessible data. Let no one 
dream of forcing them into the sanctuary of 
the human spirit, or of propagating them by 
any other means than loving persuasion. But 
with equal clarity let it be insisted that the 
element of doctrine be not flippantly disparaged, 
as if it were antithetic to experience and life, 
or only indifferently related to them. 

In considerations of this order there resides, 
it strikes us, an ample justification for calling 
attention to the doctrinal values of the Reforma- 
tion. The theme is not one which subserves 
merely an academic interest in the investigator, 
but has important practical bearings. While 
the reformers of the sixteenth century cannot 
be credited with an unblemished doctrinal 
construction, nor with fidelity at all points to 
their own better teachings, they energetically 
commended great doctrinal conceptions which 
constitute a most valuable inheritance. Fur- 
thermore, they founded opportunities for the 
progressive exposition and clarification of the 



152 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

Christian faith which must be accounted in- 
dispensable for the fulfillment of the true 
destiny of Christianity in the world. 

A call to the vivification of a Protestant 
consciousness is no summons to sectarian nar- 
rowness or animosity. Rather it is a call to 
put aside a stupid and culpable apathy, and to 
become properly awake to the demand of con- 
serving and improving a priceless inheritance. 

II. Justification by Faith 
The eminently Pauline experience of Martin 
Luther qualified him, with great energy of 
conviction, to lay hold upon the Pauline con- 
ception of justification. The earnest Pharisee, 
in the first century, baffled in his attempt to 
gain assurance ot the divine favor by a scrupu- 
lous fulfillment of the round of legal observances, 
broke through bondage and harassment of spirit 
into freedom and peace by hearty self-com- 
mittal to God as revealed in the Son of his 
love. In like manner the monk of Erfurt, in 
the sixteenth century, abandoning his painful 
and futile trial of monastic expedients, emerged 
into the open day of religious fruition by the 
simple act of casting himself upon the grace 
of God in Christ. With the reformer and the 
apostle alike "justification by faith" was no 
mere speculative inference, but rather reality 



DOCTRINAL VALUES 153 

approved by the profoundest and most precious 
type of experience. With both alike it was a 
watchword of practical emancipation, and not 
simply a phrase in a dogmatic system. 

The faith which justifies, in the view of 
Luther and his associates, meant very much 
more than bare intellectual assent. It signified 
nothing less than heart-affiance with Christ as 
the bearer of God's gracious economy. In- 
cluded in it were self-committal, whole-souled 
trust, fiducia, to use the technical term of 
that day. It denoted an ethico-religious dis- 
position, central to the personality of its subject 
— a disposition worthy of a divine fostering and 
ever testifying to the vitalizing agency of the 
Holy Spirit. But while morally and religiously 
excellent, and that in a high degree, faith was 
not allowed by any means to figure as the pro- 
curing cause of justification. Its role was 
adjudged to be that of a graciously established 
condition. Admitted to be an antecedent per- 
fectly fulfilling the demands of congruity, it 
was still emphatically debarred from the office 
of meriting the precious treasure conditioned 
upon its exercise. The justified man, the re- 
formers agreed, can properly give place to no 
other emotion than an overwhelming sense of 
gratitude for a freely bestowed benefit. 

In the viewpoint of the reformers the faith 



154 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

which justifies was put in contrast with works. 
What did that signify? Did it imply that 
they rated works as an indifferent attachment 
to the Christian system? Nothing of the sort. 
It meant that they protested against assigning 
to works an impertinent function. It meant 
that they condemned as abortive and injurious 
the policy of leaning upon the broken reed of 
imperfect human performances in the midst 
of the quest for the remission of sin, instead of 
taking refuge in the sure promise of grace in 
Jesus Christ. They counted it a gross misad- 
justment to obtrude any reference to works — ■ 
which in all likelihood could not bear close 
inspection — into an audience with the God who 
is being solicited to pardon offenses and to re- 
ceive into fellowship. At that critical juncture, 
they strenuously asserted, the whole glance of 
the soul should be toward God, centered upon 
his gracious will revealed in Jesus Christ. Any 
complacent enumeration of works is absolutely 
foreign to the situation. Their place is not 
there, but, rather, in practical demonstration 
of the fruit-bearing principle which is made 
to reside in the heart of the justified man. 
They are to evidence, in concrete form, the 
power of the forgiven life. 

A word of clarification and emphasis is appro- 
priate on this point. Let it be clearly under- 



DOCTRINAL VALUES 155 

stood that the Protestant reformers had no 
thought of lightly estimating the importance 
and value of works rightly placed. No warmer 
encomium in behalf of good works suitably 
located, or assigned to a legitimate function, 
was ever written than that which came from 
the pen of Luther. Witness this eulogy in his 
commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians: 
"Apart from the cause of justification, no one 
can commend good works prescribed by God in 
a sufficiently lofty strain. Who, indeed, can 
proclaim sufficiently the utility and fruit of one 
work which a Christian does from faith and 
in faith? It is more precious than heaven and 
earth." Again he wrote: "My God, without 
merit on my part, has given to me all the riches 
of justification and salvation in Christ. ... I 
will, therefore, give myself, as a sort of Christ 
to my neighbor, as Christ has given himself 
to me, and will do nothing in this life, except 
what I see will be needful, advantageous, and 
wholesome to my neighbor, since by faith I 
abound in all good things in Christ." Once 
more he remarked: "Faith is a living, busy, 
active, powerful thing. Neither does it ask 
whether good works are to be done, but before 
one asks it has done them, and is doing them 
always." So far, indeed, was the teaching of 
Luther from depreciating good works that it 



156 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

marked somewhat of an era in their commenda- 
tion. Of distinct value was the stress which 
he placed upon the importance of a faithful 
fulfillment of common duties in deference to 
God's will, upon the divinely approved forms 
of social service. He made these immensely 
superior to the artificial expedients by which 
ascetic piety seeks to amass merits. "It very 
often happens," he said, "that the common 
work of a servant or a handmaiden is more 
acceptable to God than all the fastings and 
works of a monk or a priest, when they are 
done without faith." 

Safeguarded in this way against displacing 
works from their legitimate office, the doctrine 
of justification by faith must be pronounced in 
the fullest sense both Christian and rational. 
Christianity is preeminently a religion of son- 
ship. The perfect filial consciousness of Jesus 
was the radiant center of his radiant personality. 
The disciples of Jesus fulfill the ideal set before 
them only as they share in his filial spirit. 
Now, legalism is distinctly adverse to the im- 
plantation and growth of this spirit. One who 
depends on the merit of works in approaching 
God, or who endeavors to put God under obliga- 
tion by a certain quantum of performances, is 
playing the role of a servant, and the further 
he carries the attempt the less becomes the 



DOCTRINAL VALUES 157 

opportunity for the instatement of the filial 
consciousness. Any sense of personal relation- 
ship with God which can be gained by that 
method must be faint and unsatisfying as 
compared with the vital union which faith by 
its very nature, as trustful, whole-hearted self- 
committal, effectuates. If the thesis is to 
stand that Christianity is preeminently the 
religion of sonship and that this type of re- 
ligion takes precedence of every other, then 
the inevitable conclusion is that the doctrine 
of justification by faith must be emphasized in 
any normal interpretation of Christianity, and 
also be rated as eminently conformable to a 
philosophic view of religion. The sons of the 
Reformation have the scantiest occasion to 
offer any apology for this article of their faith. 
As has been appropriately said: "It is the 
charter of Christian liberty for all time; of 
emancipation from legalism with its treadmill 
service and fear and gloom and uncertainty." 

In issuing the emancipating sentence on 
justification by faith the reformers of the six- 
teenth century responded to a most urgent 
demand. They were confronted by an over- 
grown legalistic system which tended at once 
greatly to burden religion with mechanical 
performances and to run it into the shallows. 
Nor were these obnoxious features simply super- 



158 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

ficial or abusive attachments to the system 
held and authorized by the dominant author- 
ities of the church. The sequel proved that 
they were deeply ingrained characteristics. 
For a brief illustration, take the single topic 
of indulgences. In deference to the impression 
made by the powerful protest of the reformers 
some restraint was put upon the traffic in these 
religious goods. The Council of Trent abol- 
ished the professional hawkers of the wares. 
But were indulgences disowned in principle? 
Far from it; on the contrary, they were formally 
approved by the Council of Trent as being 
most salutary to the people, and in the prac- 
tice of the Roman Church they were continued 
on a large scale. Even the privilege of ac- 
quiring them for money has been conceded, 
at least in certain areas, down to a very recent 
date — not to say to the present — as has been 
evidenced by the recurring grant of the so- 
called cruzada in Spain. 

Now, observe what a traffic of this kind im- 
plies. According to the well-established teach- 
ing of the Roman Church, the temporal penalty 
for sin, to which the indulgence applies, is due 
to divine justice. To permit, then, that penalty 
to be canceled in whole or in part by a money 
payment amounts to commercializing the jus- 
tice of God. A grosser substitute for a genuine 



DOCTRINAL VALUES 159 

spiritual amend could hardly be imagined. 
Other expedients more largely licensed in re- 
cent times for gaining indulgences are only less 
exposed to criticism. To make the repetition 
of prayer formulas for a specified number of 
times, or the execution of kindred exercises, 
to cover definite portions of the temporal pen- 
alty tends to belittle religion by dragging it down 
to the plane of a picayunish work-righteous- 
ness. As opposed to this paltry scheme how 
worthy appears the teaching of Luther that 
the Christian ought to bear patiently such 
retributions as, in the providential order, some- 
times follow even forgiven sins, repressing all 
complaints on account of them in the joy of 
assured fellowship with the forgiving Lord! 

We conclude that in republishing the doctrine 
of justification by faith the Reformation leaders 
wrought for the modern religious world a most 
beneficent work. The more thoroughly we 
ponder the subject, the more gratefully shall 
we be inclined to recall this part of their his- 
toric achievement. 

III. Assurance of Salvation 

"The cardinal principle of the Reformation 
was the revival in men of the sense of personal 
relation to God, as the beginning and the end, 
the alpha and the omega of their religious life." 



160 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

So remarks Henry Wace, and with very good 
warrant. Indeed, the doctrine of justification 
by faith, as enforced by the reformers, amounted 
to a summons to the individual to enter into 
direct, living, personal relation with the God 
who has sent forth the promise of forgiveness 
in Jesus Christ. Genuine faith, they conceived, 
achieves what no anxious attempt to accumulate 
merits can possibly achieve; it brings the re- 
sponse of God into the heart and effects a sense 
of reconciliation with him. Thus the doctrine 
of personal assurance of salvation followed as 
a corollary from that of justification by faith. 

The Reformation leaders used no halting lan- 
guage upon this theme. Luther and Calvin 
were very explicit and emphatic in their affirma- 
tion of the common privilege of Christians to 
know the comfort and power of assured accept- 
ance with God as subjects of his saving grace. 
In fact, it may be granted that in the fervency 
of a freshly kindled zeal they gave expression 
to a somewhat extreme form of this item in 
their creed. They were inclined to affirm that 
assurance is of the essence of justifying faith, 
so as to be necessarily resident in the justified 
person. Herein they took inadequate account 
of the exposure even of the sincere and earnest 
believer to various causes of disturbance in 
the sphere of his emotional life. In a better 



DOCTRINAL VALUES 161 

guarded statement they would have claimed 
that assurance is a normal rather than a strictly 
necessary characteristic of the inner life of one 
who has entered into a filial standing by the 
exercise of a vital faith. The needful amend- 
ment found place in the Westminster Confes- 
sion, and later was repeated in the personal 
conviction and teaching of John Wesley. Great 
credit, however, is due to the reformers for 
heralding anew the essential Scriptural message 
relative to assurance. To ignore or to discount 
that message involves nothing less than a 
deistic lapse from the conception of the divine 
immanence and responsiveness which pervades 
the New Testament writings. 

Referring to the compromising and frigid 
pronouncements which had obtained in the 
Papal Church on the subject of assurance, 
Luther launched out into this vehement strain: 
"The pope by this infamous dogma, by which 
he has commanded men to doubt respecting 
the favor of God toward themselves, has ban- 
ished God and all the promises from the church, 
overthrown the benefits of Christ, and abol- 
ished the entire gospel." The criticism might 
have been expressed in more sober and judicial 
terms, but it was not without foundation. 
Any system emphatically legalistic and sacer- 
dotal is naturally disinclined to make generous 



162 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

account of the privilege of the individual to 
enjoy positive inward assurance of salvation. 
To do that would involve a more serious qual- 
ification of dependence on ecclesiastical mechan- 
ism and priestly functioning than it is willing 
to admit. 

That the Roman Catholic system is no ex- 
ception is historically demonstrated. The fore- 
most expositor of that system in the Middle 
Ages, Thomas Aquinas, taught that commonly 
the believer must be content with a reasonable 
conjecture that he is in possession of the grace 
of justification and that assurance is bestowed 
only as an exceptional gift for the purpose of 
equipping its subject for extraordinary achieve- 
ments or sufferings. The language of the 
Council of Trent is the reverse of an invitation 
to the faithful to expect an unequivocal ground 
of confidence through an inward attestation 
of their standing by the witness of the Holy 
Spirit. For modern Roman dogmatists the 
Tridentine decree is, of course, authoritative, 
and it would be vain to seek in their writings 
any sanction of the idea that the attainment 
of a satisfying and luminous certitude of one's 
standing before God is a normal experience, the 
privilege of any earnest and devoted Christian. 
They are logically debarred, in fact, from coun- 
tenancing the given idea by a ground of dubiety 



DOCTRINAL VALUES 163 

deeply imbedded in the doctrinal scheme of 
Romanisn. In that scheme the sacraments, 
notably baptism and penance, are counted 
indispensable to justification. No one can be 
justified apart from their reception, or at least 
apart from the desire and purpose to receive 
them. But sacraments, according to the au- 
thoritative Roman scheme, have no validity 
apart from the appropriate intention in the 
ministrant — the intention to use them in the 
sense of the church. The withholding of that 
intention in case of the baptism of one who 
should afterward be inducted into the priest- 
hood, as leaving him destitute of the rite of 
initiation into the church, would nullify his 
competency to perform any sacrament de- 
pendent upon the priestly standing. Naturally, 
Roman Catholics are not exhorted to take 
much account of this ground of dubiety. Noth- 
ing is more certain, however, than the con- 
clusion that it lies in their system, inasmuch 
as the ministrant of a sacrament may possibly 
be an utter indifferentist or a concealed infidel. 
One may reasonably believe, tha,t the number 
of such ministrants has been relatively very 
small; but it cannot be conducive to mental 
serenity to have one's salvation hazarded by 
the possible nullification of an indispensable 
sacramental grace. We speak of the official 



164 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

dogmatic teaching and of its logical effect upon 
the religious life. That elect souls in the Roman 
Catholic communion have risen above the level 
of that teaching, any fair-minded historian will 
gladly admit. 

The doctrine of assurance, repristinated at 
the Reformation, has such indubitable value 
that we may properly regret to see it subjected 
to any sacrifice of credibility or appreciation by 
an overtechnical interpretation. No iron-clad 
formula as to the precise mode in which assur- 
ance is wrought is appropriate. The mode is 
not a matter for direct perception or insight. 
The religious person may know well enough 
how he feels, but the determinants of his feel- 
ing lie beyond exact inspection. He can appeal 
to scriptural sentences in behalf of the fact 
that the Holy Spirit witnesses to the estate of 
sonship. But how this is effected is not un- 
equivocally defined by Scripture. Even the 
most explicit declaration of the apostle Paul 
affirms only that the action of the Holy Spirit 
and the movement of a man's own spirit concur 
to effect a vital impression of sonship. 

In just what way the Divine Agent fulfills 
his part is not stated. Many Christians are 
persuaded that by a direct mystical utterance 
in their hearts the Holy Spirit announced their 
acceptance with God. Others, no less earnest 



DOCTRINAL VALUES 165 

and devout, have listened long for the mystic 
voice and have listened in vain. Their expe- 
rience has led them to conclude ultimately that 
the Holy Spirit can work effectively in the 
mediate fashion as well as in the immediate. 
By enkindling love, trust, and pleasure in doing 
God's will, he can attest the filial standing. 
Every element in the filial disposition works 
toward the conviction of being owned in the 
filial relationship. Through the fostering, there- 
fore, of the filial disposition toward God the 
Holy Spirit furnishes the substantial basis of 
assurance. It springs as naturally from that 
disposition as the awakened life of the flower 
unfolds in the blossom. So many a thoughtful 
Christian has been led by his experience to 
argue. 

This type of experience need not give the 
standard to all. It certainly suggests, however, 
that something less technical and specific than 
the mystic utterance in the soul is a perfectly 
valid assurance. Indeed, it will be quite safe 
to say that in whatever way the Holy Spirit 
may operate at some momentary crisis, assur- 
ance as a standing fact in the normal Christian 
life springs from a divinely quickened filial 
disposition. Whoever is so conditioned that 
he takes habitual delight in the thought of God, 
and makes serious quest after his will for the 



166 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

purpose of fulfilling it, has the very substance 
of assurance. He has it in the feeling which 
spring spontaneously from his spiritual posses- 
sions, and not through a formal deduction from 
an inventory of the possessions. 

IV. The Primacy of the Bible 

The following specifications may serve to 
outline the characteristic teaching of the re- 
formers on the present theme: (1) the incom- 
parable wealth of the Bible as a source of re- 
ligious instruction and inspiration; (2) the pre- 
eminence of biblical authority over that of the 
ecclesiastical hierarchy; (3) the right and the 
duty of Christian people in general to read 
the Holy Book and to search out its meaning. 

In the day when Luther broke through the 
bonds of a futile legalism and felt himself 
emancipated by the grace of God in Christ, 
the Bible became to him a book whose pages 
were alight with the most heartening and 
salutary truths. Subsequent study as trans- 
lator, exegete, and preacher in no wise lessened 
the measure of his appreciation or the ardor of 
his attachment. To his apprehension the very 
voice of God spoke through the Bible, and in 
the affluent content of the divine Word every 
need of the Christian seemed to him to be met. 
"Let us," he says, "hold it for certain and 



DOCTRINAL VALUES 167 

firmly established that the soul can do with- 
out everything, except the Word of God, with- 
out which none of all its wants are provided 
for. But having the Word it is rich and wants 
for nothing; since that is the Word of life, of 
truth, of light, of peace, of justification, of 
salvation, of joy, of liberty, of wisdom, of 
virtue, of grace, of glory, and of every good 
thing. . . . The Word of God is the holy of 
holies, yea, the only holy thing we Christians 
know and have. Although we were to gather 
in a heap the bones or consecrated garments 
of all the saints, they could not help us; for 
they are all lifeless things and can sanctify no 
one. God's Word, however, is the treasure that 
sanctifies everything." In line with the esti- 
mate expressed in these sentences is the re- 
former's declaration that the sacraments have 
value only as inclosing the Word of God. 

The significant feature in Luther's attitude 
toward the Bible was the overwhelming stress 
which he placed upon its practical worth and 
unrivaled function. Herein he represented very 
largely the reformers in general. The like 
direction of emphasis is evidenced to a notice- 
able extent in the early Protestant Confessions. 
The original Protestant thesis was not in con- 
trast with the Roman Catholic theory as re- 
spects the degree of inspiration or inerrant 



168 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

authority to be accorded to the Scriptures. 
Luther, in fact, was freer by several degrees to 
admit a possible errancy in subordinate por- 
tions of the Scriptures than were contemporary 
Roman dogmatists. The language of the 
Council of Trent lends support to the supposi- 
tion that the contents of the Old and New 
Testaments in all their parts were dictated by 
the Holy Spirit. Melchior Canus, writing near 
the time of the council, contended that no error, 
even of a trivial character, can be acknowledged 
to have place within biblical limits. Bellar- 
mine, a generation or two later, in like manner, 
ruled out the possible intrusion of error. 

Recent pronouncements from the seat of 
authority have sanctioned the same doctrine. 
The Vatican Council did so in general terms, 
and Leo XIII, in the encyclical Providentissimus 
Deus, reenforced the natural interpretation of 
its decree in the most explicit statements. No 
Protestant scholastic of the seventeenth century 
— not even a Quenstedt — ever put forth a 
more stalwart affirmation of biblical inerrancy 
than that which came from the pen of the 
distinguished pontiff. After noting the tenor of 
his declarations, one has little occasion to recall 
such phrases as "absolute truth" or "absolute 
inerrancy" which recent dogmatists, like Schee- 
ben and Billot, apply to the Scriptures down 



DOCTRINAL VALUES 169 

to their least item. Manifestly, there is no 
sort of demand to contrast the formal estimate 
of biblical authority, as made by original 
Protestantism, with that of Romanism in the 
sixteenth or any subsequent century. 

It is entirely true nevertheless that the 
representatives of the great reform accorded 
to the Bible a function vastly transcending that 
admitted by contemporary or later Romanism. 
They claimed for it a right of direct impact 
upon the individual and the Christian body 
which the Roman system precluded by the 
intrusion of what has often been viewed as a 
double barrier. On the one hand was the 
assumption of the infallibility of the hierarchy, 
which involved the conclusion that anything 
which had once been formally decided could 
not legitimately be remanded to the tribunal of 
the Scriptures. On the other hand was the 
claim to the possession of traditions coordinate 
in authority with the Scriptures, and so en- 
titled to divide with them the effective direc- 
tion and control of Christians. As, however, 
the hierarchy arrogated the right to determine 
the content of valid tradition, it is evident 
that the second barrier to the practical suprem- 
acy of the Scriptures logically comes under the 
first, tradition amounting only to another name 
for the authority of the hierarchy. 



170 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

As much has been virtually admitted by 
prominent Roman dogmatists in their declara- 
tions that the content of tradition can be fixed 
apart from searching historical investigation. 
The admission began as far back as the six- 
teenth century. "It is an infallible and catholic 
rule," said Pedro de Soto, "that whatever 
things the Roman Church believes, holds, and 
maintains, that are not contained in the Scrip- 
tures, were handed down from the apostles." 
Bellarmine in his day sanctioned the same easy- 
going expedient for ascertaining apostolic, or 
authoritative, tradition; and it was clearly 
asserted in the time of Pius IX by Perrone 
and Malou. The latter wrote, "As soon as 
anything is generally accepted in the holy 
church, the general witness of the living church 
is an infallible evidence that this truth is con- 
tained in tradition, and, indeed, independent 
of every memorial of antiquity." Who can 
fail to see that on this basis, the hierarchy, 
which is absolutely supreme and determines 
what the living church believes, is released 
from the necessity of even consulting history? 
Tradition becomes nothing better than a con- 
venient fiction. The fiat of the existing officiary 
is fully controlling over the issue of any dis- 
cussion which may arise. All thought of appeal 
to a higher standard is outlawed. 



DOCTRINAL VALUES 171 

The vigor with which the reformers chal- 
lenged the infallibility of the hierarchy, and 
repudiated its title to lordship over the Scrip- 
tures, was well matched by the energy with 
which they asserted the right of Christians 
universally to search the Bible and to judge 
for themselves of the truths relating to their 
salvation. They may not in all instances have 
carried out their maxim with due consistency, 
but they gave it emphatic declaration. "To 
know and to judge of doctrine," said Luther, 
"so pertains to each and every Christian that 
he is worthy of anathema who would detract 
a hair's breadth from this right." In penning 
statements of this kind the Reformation lead- 
ers were not by any means assuming that the 
common man is qualified to play the expert in 
fine exegetical discriminations. Their thought 
was, rather, that the Bible is the great practical 
book, not a compendium of riddles and mystical 
sayings, but a volume so clear and ample in 
its elucidation of things necessary to salvation 
that any honest and devout mind can find 
therein the instruction needed for direction, 
comfort, and inspiration. This point of view 
came to definite expression in the Irish Articles 
and the Westminster Confession. These creeds, 
it is true, were not composed till the first half 
of the seventeenth century, but in this matter 



172 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

they were undoubtedly representative of orig- 
inal Protestantism. 

Over against this insistence on the real en- 
thronement of the Bible in popular use what 
was the policy of the Roman Church? It 
issued, indeed, no sweeping prohibition of the 
use of the Bible by laymen. On the other hand, 
it gave cold encouragement to its use. Every 
one who looked into its pages was reminded of 
his solemn obligation to interpret it in the 
sense of the church. Furthermore, it was 
counted prudent to curb his judgment by ac- 
companying the text with notes adapted to 
safeguard the established dogmas. In notable 
instances evidence of a downright jealousy of 
the habit of Bible-reading was put on record. 
For example, in the Unigenitus constitution — 
which Scheeben pronounces a perfectly indubit- 
able specimen of an ex cathedra document — 
condemnation is passed upon this entirely sober 
and well-sounding proposition from the writings 
of Quesnel: "The Lord's Day ought to be 
sanctified on the part of Christians by pious 
reading, and above all by the perusal of the 
Holy Scriptures." Several kindred proposi- 
tions, equally innocent in matter and phrase, 
were excoriated in this same Jesuitized docu- 
ment. 

Possibly some American student might be 



DOCTRINAL VALUES 173 

inclined to find somewhat of a compensation 
for the damnatory sentence of the Unigenitus 
in the fact that the fathers of the Third Plenary 
Council of Baltimore put into their pastoral 
letter a statement which is very nearly an 
equivalent of that of Quesnel. But the utter- 
ance of these fathers has no authority com- 
parable to that attaching to an infallible con- 
stitution. Furthermore, it cannot be taken as 
symptomatic of Roman Catholic policy at 
large, otherwise a competent witness would not 
have been able to inform us very recently that 
millions of homes in South America contain 
not a single leaf of the Bible. 

Other significant tokens of jealousy against 
a popular use of the Scriptures could be men- 
tioned. We content ourselves with the follow- 
ing brief list: The rules attached to editions 
of the Index, published under the authority of 
various popes in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries, by which the reading of the Scrip- 
tures in the vernacular was confined to definitely 
recommended persons; the blasts against the 
work of Bible societies, issued by Pius VII, 
Gregory XVI, and others; the thrusting into the 
Index of Laserre's translation of the Gospels 
into French. A papal record filled in with 
such a content certainly gives no warm en- 
couragement to Bible-reading. No one can 



174 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

discover in it a tithe of the sentiment which 
breathes in these words of Coleridge: "Would 
I withhold the Bible from the cottager and the 
artisan? Heaven forfend. The fairest flower 
that ever clomb up a cottage window is not 
so fair a sight to my eyes as the Bible gleaming 
through the lower panes." 

The significant point in the reformers' esti- 
mate of the Bible, as has been indicated, was 
not a technical theory respecting the controlling 
or exclusive agency of the Holy Spirit in the 
production of the Bible. It was, rather, a 
mighty stress upon the incomparable worth and 
sufficiency of the religious contents of the 
Bible. Herein their message ought to reach 
across the centuries to us in never-diminishing 
power. We truly enter into and conserve our 
inheritance only as the great truths of the Bible 
are permitted to engage our habitual contem- 
plation, and to illuminate our souls as the 
rising sun illuminates the landscape. 

V. Anti-Sacerdotalism, or Limitation 
of Priestly Sovereignty 

Every one of the doctrines of the Reforma- 
tion to which attention has been given is 
intrinsically adapted to serve as a barrier 
against sacerdotalism. A decree of emancipa- 
tion of Christians from an exaggerated de- 



DOCTRINAL VALUES 175 

pendence on priestly offices and from an un- 
qualified subjection to priestly demands was 
involved in their publication. If the individual 
can be justified by his faith, if in the inherent 
potency of this faith a basis of personal assur- 
ance of salvation is provided, and if it is the 
right of the individual to go directly to the 
Scriptures and to find there all strictly needful 
instruction in matters vitally concerning his 
salvation, then the lordship of the priest, and 
indeed of the whole ecclesiastical hierarchy, 
over him is substantially vanquished. The 
priest can still serve as a valuable adviser, 
admonisher, and helper, but the role of lord- 
ship has become foreign to him. Men can be 
saved without asking or obtaining his consent. 
The great work of the reformers against 
sacerdotalism, wrought through the medium of 
the doctrines already considered, was supple- 
mented in various ways. A notable limitation 
of priestly supereminence and sovereignty was 
involved in the universal priesthood of be- 
lievers which they asserted in common. This 
meant, not that any man of his own motion 
could fitly undertake to administer sacraments 
and to discharge other ministerial or priestly 
functions, but only that he is intrinsically 
eligible to the undertaking of the functions 
should the conditions so advise and his fellow 



176 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

Christians give their consent. Luther gave a 
luminous exposition of this point as follows: 
"If a little company of pious Christian laymen 
were taken prisoners and carried away to a 
desert, and had not among them a priest con- 
secrated by a bishop, and were there to agree 
to elect one of them, married or unmarried, 
and were to order him to baptize, to celebrate 
the mass, to absolve and to preach, this man 
would as truly be a priest, as if all the bishops 
and all the popes had consecrated him. . . . 
Since we are all priests alike, no man may put 
himself forward, or take upon himself, without 
our consent and election, to do that which we 
have all alike power to do. For, if a thing is 
common to all, no man may take it to himself 
without the wish and command of the com- 
munity." In this view the priest is distin- 
guished solely by his official position and the 
functions connected therewith. When he has 
once been stripped of these nothing remains 
to differentiate him from a common Christian. 
A thought very much like that expressed by 
Luther was in the mind of Zwingli when he 
said: "All Christians are brethren of Christ, and 
brethren among themselves, and therefore 
ought not to call any one father upon earth." 

In another way the reformers qualified the 
supereminence and prerogative of the priest. 



DOCTRINAL VALUES 177 

They did this in the trend and outcome of 
their teaching on the sacraments. Without 
exception they denied the Roman assumption 
that the priest is master of the sacramental 
grace, as having power to nullify the rite which 
he assumes to perform by withholding the 
proper intention. Again, the reformers limited 
the scope of dependence upon the official ad- 
ministrant of ceremonies by limiting the num- 
ber of the sacraments. In general, they decided 
for excluding from that category all rites except 
baptism and the eucharist. Luther was, indeed, 
inclined to retain absolution. However, he 
greatly reduced its significance as a prop to 
sacerdotalism by maintaining that any Chris- 
tian is competent to give the absolving sentence 
to a brother who may confess to him the sins 
which burden his conscience. Luther's prefer- 
ence for the retention of absolution was not 
controlling even among Lutherans. The Protes- 
tant consensus was decidedly in favor of class- 
ing only baptism and the eucharist among sac- 
raments. The limitation involved a decided 
curtailment of priestly sovereignty, especially by 
the shutting out of the sacrament of penance 
with its combination of auricular confession 
and priestly absolution. 

Furthermore, the reformers modified the con- 
ception of the retained sacraments in such 



178 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

wise as to make them in less degree auxiliary 
to priestly exaltation. In their interpretation 
of the eucharist they wholly excluded the 
Roman assumption that it is a propitiatory 
sacrifice for the living and the dead. In con- 
nection with both baptism and the eucharist 
they modified the overplus of magic and mys- 
ticism which had been intruded. Here the 
legitimate goal of the Reformation movement, 
it must be confessed, was not at once fully 
reached. Luther, reacting from Anabaptist 
fervors, halted in the way, and his influence 
effected that in some quarters an undue scope 
was given to sacramental mysticism and effi- 
ciency. Still, notable progress was made. In 
the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confes- 
sion, and the Thirty-nine Articles of the 
Church of England a view closely approaching 
Zwingli's rational conception of the nature and 
functions of the sacraments came to expression. 
Later, in the Westminster Confession the 
thoroughly consistent Protestant declaration 
was made that grace and salvation are not so 
inseparably annexed to the sacraments that 
no one can be saved without them. 

It hardly needs to be observed that this 
outcome, logically involved in Reformation 
postulates, and now acknowledged on every 
hand in genuinely Protestant territory, stands 



DOCTRINAL VALUES 179 

in sharp contrast with the ultra sacramentalism 
enthroned in Roman Catholicism. In that 
domain the doctrine prevails that all infants 
dying unbaptized are everlastingly excluded 
from the kingdom of heaven. So the Tridentine 
Catechism affirms in very explicit terms. The 
affirmation is repeated in the standard Roman 
Catholic dictionaries and encyclopedias, and in 
the writings of well-nigh the whole body of 
dogmatists, the dissentients being so few that 
Billot feels authorized to say, "Theologians are 
unanimously agreed in tins: the actual sacra- 
ment has been in any time whatsoever an alto- 
gether necessary means of salvation to all 
those who have never had the use of reason." 
For non-Catholics, who have reached the age 
of rational choice and action, the outlook, on 
the basis of Roman teaching, is equally somber, 
since any remote chance for their salvation 
which may be admitted is more than offset by 
the fact that they are exposed, not merely to 
endless exclusion from the kingdom of heaven, 
but to the positive tortures of hell. Any one 
of them who has fallen into any serious trans- 
gression, at least after baptism, must have 
recourse to the sacrament of penance, in act 
or in desire, in order to gain remission. Ac- 
cording to the Tridentine decisions even perfect 
contrition will not avail apart from the sacra- 



180 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

ment without the interposition of a desire for 
the same. Something has indeed been said in 
comparatively recent times about the possible 
salvation of those who, being bound by in- 
vincible ignorance, are true to the light given 
them. But, aside from the difficulty of recon- 
ciling such a view with the infallible decisions 
of the Council of Trent, as also with the blunt 
declaration of the Council of Florence that 
salvation is impossible for any not joined to 
the Catholic Church before death, it must be 
rated as having logically only a paltry sig- 
nificance. 

Holiness, we are told by the authorities, is 
distinctly a mark of the Roman Catholic 
Church. To admit, therefore, that any con- 
siderable proportion of those outside its sacred 
borders are so extraordinarily exemplary as to 
be veritably true to the light given them, would 
make a mock of its proud claim to be dis- 
tinctively the domain of the holy. In the 
remorseless system of Rome no door of escape 
from dooming, without appreciable exception, 
the innumerable multitude destitute of the 
benefit of her sacraments is provided. Of 
course we are not so uncharitable as to suppose 
that Roman Catholics in the mass hold con- 
sciously to a creed of wholesale and gratuitous 
damnation; but that such a creed is contained 



DOCTRINAL VALUES 181 

in pronouncements which they are supposed to 
be under obligation to accept, is undeniable. 

A very important restriction on sacerdotal 
assumption and aggression was instituted by the 
reformers through their challenge of the neces- 
sity of a hierarchical constitution of the church. 
Not only did they repudiate the papal mon- 
archy as representing a most unwarrantable 
usurpation, but they disallowed that even the 
episcopate is an indispensable factor in church 
constitution. It was retained in the Scandi- 
navian countries and in England; nowhere, 
however, in the territory of the Reformation 
was it counted essential to ecclesiastical valid- 
ity. The Church of England, at the initial 
stage, formed no exception. It was not till the 
time of Laud that the High Church shibboleth 
began to be repeated in earnest. The repre- 
sentative men of the English Church in the 
sixteenth century, such as Jewel, Parker, and 
Whitgift, had no thought of claiming exclusive 
validity for the episcopal constitution. Ban- 
croft seems to be on record as asserting it in 
1589, but he repudiated it in practice more 
than twenty years later. In the theory of 
original Protestantism the way was unmis- 
takably left open to a democratic organization 
of the church. 

On the proper relation between church and 



182 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

state the Reformation standpoint was widely 
distinguished from the sacerdotal platform. The 
representatives of the former discountenanced 
the idea that any right of authoritative direc- 
tion of the administration of the state resides 
in the ecclesiastical power. Indeed, it cannot 
well be denied, that in practice they often 
conceded to the state a larger function in the 
management of the church than they claimed 
for the church in supervising the affairs of the 
state. This course, however, was not so much 
the dictate of a theoretical preference as the 
result of the pressing exigencies by which the 
Protestant communions were confronted. In 
the midst of the struggle for existence they 
naturally were not disinclined to welcome the 
support of a strong ally, and to make conces- 
sions in return for the support. Independently 
of the demands arising out of special condi- 
tions coordination of the two powers, as opposed 
to any pronounced subordination of either was 
the plan most congenial to the Protestant 
consciousness. 

Clear tokens of this were not wanting. The 
Swiss reformer CEcolampadius strongly advo- 
cated the relative independence of the church. 
Calvin, however he may have shaped the ad- 
ministration at Geneva, was committed in his 
general theory to the same view. It may be 



DOCTRINAL VALUES 183 

said, indeed, that in the proper Calvinian theory 
church and state were rated as coordinate pow- 
ers, having each its own province, and neither 
being legitimately reduced to a mere depend- 
ency of the other. As for the German reformer, 
in so far as he tolerated the intervention of 
state authority, it was not at all with the idea 
that the use of force is congenial to the in- 
terests of religion. "Luther," says Ranke, "was 
of all men who have stood at the head of a 
movement world-wide in its significance, the 
one perhaps who was least inclined to have 
anything to do with force and war." 

The Roman Catholic theory on the normal 
relation between church and state stood then, 
and remains still, in complete contrast. Bon- 
iface VIII, in the bull Unam Sanctam, repu- 
diated the idea that the state possesses an 
authority in any wise coordinate with that of 
the church as no better than Manichaean dual- 
ism. "There is," he said, "one body, one head. 
Therefore the temporal authority should be 
subject to the spiritual." This was a mediaeval 
pronouncement. But an ample list of parallels 
was supplied in the nineteenth century. Phil- 
lips, a distinguished expositor of canon law, 
wrote, "A glance at the difference between 
spiritual and worldly sovereignty shows the 
impossibility of coordination." E. S. Purcell 



184 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

declared in an essay, having the apparent 
approval of Archbishop Manning: "The state is 
not competent to determine by its own author- 
ity its proper range and sphere; these are 
shaped out for it by the action of the church." 
Liberatore maintained that the bull TJnam 
Sanctam, as having been confirmed by Leo X 
and the Fifth Lateran Council, is of decisive 
dogmatic weight, and in harmony with its con- 
tent he affirmed: "According to Catholic doc- 
trine, the civil power bears comparison to the 
spiritual as the body to the soul." Other 
writers could be cited to the same effect, and 
consistently supplementing the whole list we 
have the deeds and words of the popes. Pius 
IX in several instances formally pronounced 
state laws null and void. Leo XIII prudently 
refrained from this extreme in action, but that 
he did not lag behind his predecessor in theory 
is sufficiently indicated by these words in the 
encyclical of January 10, 1890: "Both that 
which ought to be believed and that which 
ought to be done the church by divine right 
teaches, and in the church the supreme Pontiff. 
It belongs to the Pontiff not only to rule the 
church, but in general so to order the action 
of Christian citizens, that they may be in suit- 
able accord with the hope of obtaining eternal 
salvation." 



DOCTRINAL VALUES 185 

Combining the assumption of the supremacy 
of the spiritual power over the temporal with 
the absoluteness of the pope in the govern- 
ment of the church and his infallibility in the 
determination of doctrine, we have in the 
papacy, as now authoritatively defined, the 
most consummate autocracy, theoretically 
speaking, that it ever entered the heart of man 
to conceive. Who will care to deny that such 
an autocracy must be perfectly intolerable 
except on the supposition that its possessors 
will unfailingly be clothed with attributes of 
wisdom and virtue scarcely less than divine? 
To this supposition, as we have endeavored to 
show in the volume on "Sacerdotalism in the 
Nineteenth Century," history gives the lie over 
and over again. It follows that the Refor- 
mation bequeathed an immeasurable benefit in 
preparing for a modern world in which the 
papal autocracy, though unrestricted in theory, 
is rendered largely impotent in practice. In 
this benefit Roman Catholics, even those 
resident in predominantly Roman Catholic 
countries, share to a conspicuous degree. 
Let them pay their respects to the heroic men 
of the sixteenth century whose words and deeds 
were a potent factor in securing their exemption, 
as members of the state, from an irresponsible 
ecclesiastical overlordship. 



186 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

We make no attempt to idealize the reform- 
ers. In such a tremendous revolt from the old 
order and rapid transition to the new, as oc- 
curred in the sixteenth century, faults both in 
teaching and practice, were well-nigh inevitable. 
Nevertheless, those hardy thinkers and workers 
conferred upon subsequent generations a price- 
less boon. Through the publication of doctrines 
which come near the heart of the Gospel, and 
through effective protest against an ironclad 
ecclesiasticism — which was bound by its in- 
herent tendencies and the demands of its 
perpetuation to throttle liberty and to build 
up walls against progress — they have placed 
both religious and civil society under great and 
perpetual obligations. May the day never 
come, in earthly history, when their achieve- 
ments shall cease to be gratefully remembered. 
Throughout the length and breadth of the 
Protestant communions may a vital apprecia- 
tion of the great Reformation inheritance be 
shown in the cultivation of a Living Prot- 
estant Consciousness. 



ESSAY VII 

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN AS ROMAN 
CATHOLIC APOLOGIST 



ESSAY VII 

JOHN HENRY NEWMAN AS ROMAN 
CATHOLIC APOLOGIST 1 

The elaborate biography of Newman by 
Wilfrid Ward reenforces the evidence, which 
had been given previously in Purcell's Life of 
Manning, that the Tractarian leader, in going 
over to Rome in 1845, did not gain altogether 
congenial relationships. In his chosen task of 
justifying and commending Roman Cathol- 
icism, Newman found himself thwarted by the 
practical obstacles that were thrown in the 
way of his ambition to serve in the field of theo- 
logical education, and was afflicted by tokens of 
distrust too plain to be misinterpreted. The 
acme of distrust and of effective hostility was 
lodged in the extreme Ultramontane party in 
England, represented by Manning, W. G. Ward, 
and others; but apart from their influence, 
which, indeed, was not small, there was a tend- 
ency at Rome and among stalwart Ultra- 
montanists generally to look askance at New- 
man. While it was felt that on the score of 
his antecedents and connections he ought to be 

1 Reprinted from The Methodist Review (Nashville), 
189 



190 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

of great value in furthering the Roman cause 
in England, and that it would be very impolitic 
to visit him with any open sign of displeasure, 
the attitude toward him for a large part of his 
career was quite lacking in confidence and 
friendliness. At one point there was even a 
move toward official censure. An article which 
Newman contributed to the Rambler, on "Con- 
sulting the Laity," was made a ground of 
formal complaint at Rome. George Talbot, who 
acted as agent for Manning at the Vatican, 
writing April 25, 1867, some years after the 
publication of the offending article, used this 
strong language: "It is perfectly true that a 
cloud has been hanging over Dr. Newman in 
Rome ever since the Bishop of Newport delated 
him to Rome for heresy in his article in the 
Rambler on consulting the laity on matters of 
faith. None of his writings since have removed 
that cloud. Every one of them has created 
a controversy, and the spirit of them has never 
been approved in Rome." 2 Doubtless it may 
be said that shortly after this communication 
was written, the attitude toward Newman at 
the papal court showed signs of improvement, 
among which the most conspicuous was the 
extension to him of an invitation to act as an 
advisory theologian in connection with the 

2 Wilfrid Ward, Life of John Henry Newman, II, p. 146. 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 191 

Vatican Council. The fact, however, remains 
that, on the whole, it was a frigid appreciation 
which was accorded to him by official Roman- 
ism and its more zealous clients throughout 
the pontificate of Pius IX (1846-1878). 

Evidence in support of this conclusion is 
supplied in abundant measure by correspond- 
ence and memoranda of Newman reaching over 
a wide stretch of years. In 1848 he had occa- 
sion to write: "These old priests will be satis- 
fied with nothing — they have pursued us with 
criticisms ever since we were Catholics." 3 He 
made the following record in 1863: "When 
Monsell was in Rome, he came back with the 
remark that I had no friend at Rome." 4 In 
1866, referring to the necessity of guarding 
against criticism at Rome, he remarked: "To 
write theology is like dancing on the tight rope 
some hundred feet above ground. It is hard 
to keep from falling and the fall is great." 5 
The next year he penned this statement: "There 
is no doubt that I am looked at with suspicion 
at Rome, because I will not go the whole 
hog in all the extravagances of the school of 
the day, and I cannot move my finger with- 
out giving offense." 6 In 1868 he passed this 
comment on the characteristic attitude of 



3 Ward, Life of Newman, I, p. 216. 4 Ibid., I, p. 587. 

B Ibid., II, p. 125. 6 Ibid., II, p. 188. 



192 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

ecclesiastical dignitaries toward himself: "I 
have found in the Catholic Church abundance 
of courtesy, but very little sympathy among 
persons in high place, except a few." 7 With 
this may be compared his remark in 1875: 
"I have had more to try and afflict me in 
various ways as a Catholic than as an Angli- 
can." 8 In his private journal he made this 
entry in 1878: "I have before now said in 
writing to Cardinals Wiseman and Barnabo, 
when I considered myself treated with slight 
and unfairness, 'So this is the return made to 
me for working for the Catholic cause for 
many years,' that is, to that effect, I feel it 
still, and ever shall — but it was not a disap- 
pointed ambition which I was then expressing 
in words, but a scorn and wonder at the in- 
justice shown me, and at the demand for 
toadyism on my part if I was to get their 
favor and the favor of Rome." 9 When in 
1879 he was made cardinal he welcomed the 
honor on the specific ground that it was an 
effectual means of lifting the "cloud" which 
had rested upon him. 10 

That the temper of Leo XIII wrought in 
some measure to induce a more favorable 
attitude toward Newman need not be doubted. 



'Letter to the Duke of Norfolk, postscript. 

8 Ward, I, p. 201. 9 Ibid., II, p. 433. 10 Ibid., II, p. 438. 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 193 

But it would be a mistake to interpret the 
advancement to the cardinalate as a token that 
official Romanism had come to regard the 
arch-convert with entire satisfaction. A prin- 
cipal motive in pressing for the bestowment 
of this honor, as appears from the express 
declarations of the Duke of Norfolk, was a 
wish to take away the obstacle to Newman's 
efficiency as a Romanist propagandist which 
lay in the impression disseminated by his 
opponents that he was no faithful representative 
of Roman Catholic beliefs. 11 It is altogether 
probable that this motive had great weight 
with the sagacious pontiff. The exaltation to 
the cardinalate testifies, therefore, quite as 
much to administrative prudence as to in- 
terior indorsement of the subject of the exalta- 
tion, though it is not necessary to deny to a 
man of the mental breadth of Leo XIII a 
measure of appreciation of the talented Eng- 
lishman. 

II 

In seeking an explanation of the distrust 
entertained toward Newman in a large part 
of the Roman Catholic domain, our attention 
is directed, in the first place, to his theory of 
doctrinal development — the theory that prom- 

11 Ibid., II, p. 436. 



194 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

inent features of the creed and worship of 
the Roman Catholic Church proceeded from 
obscure beginnings, and attained to distinct 
expression and general recognition only by a 
process of evolution through considerable peri- 
ods. This point of view, which was given full 
expression, near the time of his exit from 
Anglicanism, in the Essay on the Develop- 
ment of Christian Doctrine, struck conserv- 
ative Romanists as being very much of a 
novelty. It is true that Perrone at the same 
period was advocating a similar theory, to the 
end of justifying the publication of the immac- 
ulate conception of the Virgin as a dogma of 
the faith, and that pontifical authority was 
not averse to making a virtual resort to the 
position of the Jesuit theologian in its deter- 
mination to publish that dogma. But it is 
one thing to make a practical use of a theory 
for a special predetermined end, and quite 
another thing to license any such broad and 
open assertion of it as was made by Newman. 
His exposition of doctrinal development was 
too much in contrast with the customary 
representation not to be regarded as dubious 
and unsettling, if not, indeed, plainly heterodox. 
To criticize openly the distinguished convert 
was for Romanists a rather embarrassing task. 
But adverse comment was not kept wholly 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 195 

under cover. The most famous of American 
converts to Romanism, 0. A. Brownson, began 
forthwith to brandish a hostile weapon with 
characteristic vigor. Having outlined New- 
man's view, he proceeds with this comment: 
"We ask, Does the Church herself take this 
view? Most assuredly not. She asserts that 
there has been no progress, no increase, no 
variation of faith; that what she believes and 
teaches now is precisely what she has always 
taught from the first; that a new definition 
implies no improved understanding of the 
faith, but is to be rated simply as a practical 
expedient against the novel expressions of the 
enemies of religion." 12 This language put the 
conservative standpoint in the crassest form, 
but it may serve to indicate the recoil against 
Newman's teaching on doctrinal development 
that was felt in minds accustomed to take at 
their face value the assumptions of popes and 
councils on the antiquity of all the articles 
of the accepted creed. 

Not only the general contention of Newman 
relative to doctrinal development, but various 
details in his treatment of the subject were 
calculated to afflict strict traditionalists. It 
was scarcely agreeable to them to be told that 
Scripture, taken in its plain sense, afforded no 

12 J3rown$on's Quarterly Review, July, 184§, 



196 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

adequate basis for the doctrinal structure of 
Rome, as they were in effect told in this dec- 
laration: "It may almost be laid down as an 
historical fact, that the mystical interpreta- 
tion and orthodoxy will stand and fall to- 
gether." 13 In respect of the papacy it could 
hardly be otherwise than disquieting to read 
that "a pope would not arise but in proportion 
as the church was consolidated"; 14 or that 
"Christianity developed in the form, first, of 
a Catholic, then of a papal church." 15 On the 
subject of the Virgin Mary's rightful position, 
it was not exactly pleasant to be reminded 
that "there was in the first ages no public 
and ecclesiastical recognition of the place 
which St. Mary holds in the economy of 
grace;" 16 or that the Nestorian controversy in 
the fifth century, in the prominence which it 
secured to Mary, was instrumental in supply- 
ing "the subject of that august proposition 
of which Arianism had provided the pred- 
icate"; 17 or that it is a matter for question 
whether Augustine, in all his voluminous 
writings, invokes the Virgin in a single in- 
stance. 18 In relation to confession, it was not 



13 Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, 1846, 
p. 324. "Ibid., p. 145. 16 Ibid., p. 319. 

16 Ibid., p. 407. 17 Ibid. 

,8 Letter to E. B. Pusey on Occasion of his Eirenicon. 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 197 

conducive to dogmatic complacency to be in- 
formed that the confessional proper was foreign 
to the primitive Christian age, since "confes- 
sion and penance were at first public." 19 Not 
less disquieting than any one of the above 
particulars must have been the lesson on 
the indebtedness of Catholic truth and usage 
to heresy, enforced as that lesson was in these 
emphatic sentences: "The doctrines even of 
the heretical bodies are indices and anticipa- 
tions of the mind of the church. . . . Not in 
one principle or doctrine only, but in its whole 
system, Montanism is a remarkable anticipa- 
tion or presage of developments which soon 
began to show themselves in the church, 
though they were not perfected for centuries 
after. . . . The doctrinal determinations and the 
ecclesiastical usages of the Middle Ages are the 
true fulfillment of its self-willed and abortive 
attempts at precipitating the growth of the 
church." 20 In this whole line of specifications 
Newman may have run close to historic fact, 
but that could not go far in recommending 
his type of apology to those who preferred to 
have history keep silence where it refused 
to speak in harmony with long-standing and 
dominant traditions. Those who held, even 
approximately, the point of view expressed in 

19 Essay, p. 365. 20 Ibid., pp. 349-351. 



198 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

the citation from Brownson could but stand in 
doubt as to the service which the English con- 
vert was rendering to the defense of the faith. 
With one great wing of the Roman Catholic 
Church, namely, that which was heartily com- 
mitted to the program of Pius IX, as expressed 
in the Syllabus of Errors and the decrees of 
the Vatican Council, there was a distinct 
reason for distrusting and disparaging New- 
man. For he made it evident that he was 
deeply opposed to that program. The ground 
of this opposition did not he in the theoretical 
Ultramontanism which the program represented. 
In theory Newman was quite reconciled to a 
high estimate of papal prerogatives. But he 
counted it impolitic to flaunt the theory in 
the face of the age, and worse than impolitic 
to exploit it in the interest of a consolidated 
and absolutist rule in the church. From this 
standpoint he deplored the issuing of the 
Syllabus in 1864 and the passing of the in- 
fallibility decree by the Vatican Council in 
1870. Respecting the former he wrote pri- 
vately, "The advisers of the Holy Father 
seem determined to make our position in 
England as difficult as ever they can." 21 At 
a later date, in response to Gladstone's ex- 
coriation of the Syllabus, he publicly indicated 

21 Ward, Life of Newman, II, p. 81. 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 199 

his pronounced dissatisfaction with the papal 
document by minifying its dogmatic authority 
in such terms as only one who fervently wished 
it out of sight could have used. 22 In relation 
to the work of the Vatican Council, he gave 
still more emphatic expression to his sore 
disappointment. Writing to Bishop Ulla- 
thorne, January 28, 1870, he complained: 
"No impending danger is to be averted, but 
a great difficulty is to be created. ... I look 
with anxiety at the prospect of having to de- 
fend decisions which may not be difficult to 
my private judgment, but may be most diffi- 
cult to defend logically in the face of historic 
facts. . . . Why should an aggressive and inso- 
lent faction be allowed to make the hearts of 
the just to mourn whom the Lord hath not 
made sorrowful?" 23 In a letter to another 
correspondent he strongly reprobated the haste 
of the champions of the new dogma. "You 
must prepare men's minds," he said, "for the 
doctrine, and you must not flout the existing 
tradition of centuries. The tradition of Ire- 
land, the tradition of England, is not on the 
side of papal infallibility. You know how 
recent Ultramontane views are in both coun- 
tries; so too of France; so of Germany. . . . 

^Letter to the Duke of Norfolk. 
a'Ward, II, p. 288. 



200 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

Hardly any murmured at the act of 1854 (the 
declaration of the Immaculate Conception of 
the Virgin); half of the Catholic world is in 
fright at the proposed act of 1870." 24 Re- 
ferring to the discovery that the declaration of 
infallibility had long been intended, though 
studiously passed by in official announcements 
respecting the Council, he added: "Is this 
the way the faithful were ever treated be- 
fore? . . . To outsiders like me it would seem 
as if a grave dogmatic question was being 
treated merely as a move in ecclesiastical 
politics." A few days after the passage of the 
Infallibility decree, he expressed a doubt 
whether it had claimed the moral unanimity 
necessary for a truly ecumenical decision, and 
intimated that the verdict upon this point 
would depend upon the future conduct of 
the dissenting bishops. 25 In the following year, 
while affirming that the imposition of the 
Vatican dogma made no burden for himself, 
he declared: "It is impossible to deny that 
it was done with an imperiousness and over- 
bearing willfulness which has been a great 
scandal." 26 These sharp strictures on the 
Vatican platform, though expressed primarily 



24 Letter to Dr. Whitty, April 12, 1870 (Ward, II, p. 296). 
26 Cited in Letter to the Duke of Norfolk. 
26 Ward, II, p. 380. 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 201 

in private correspondence, naturally served to 
reveal Newman's position in a sufficient de- 
gree to cause him to be associated with the 
foes of that platform. Moreover, contrary to 
his expectation, the letter to Bishop Ullathorne 
was early given to the public. It was inevitable, 
therefore, that in the church in which the 
Vatican platform triumphed, he could not be 
in the full sense persona grata, or be accounted 
an entirely trustworthy exponent of the ap- 
proved system. 

It was noticed above that Newman's posi- 
tion on the advisability of consulting the laity 
was adjudged sufficiently singular to cause a 
complaint to be preferred against him at Rome. 
That he was really at variance with the Roman 
trend on this subject appears in this state- 
ment, which he penned in 1865: "At Rome 
they treat the laity according to the tradition 
of the Middle Ages, as, in Harold the Dauntless, 
the Abbot of Durham treated Count Witi- 
kind. Well, facts alone will slowly make them 
recognize the fact of what a laity must be in 
the nineteenth century if it is to cope with 
Protestantism." 27 Neither in his own time, 
nor since the rise of Modernism, with its in- 
sistence on conceding to the laity a larger 
sphere of influence in the counsels of the 

27 Ibid., II, p. 69. 



202 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

church, could this phase in Newman's thinking 
commend him to official Romanism. 

On another point Newman exhibited himself 
as at variance with the trend of Roman teach- 
ing. He was not pleased with the action of 
the Vatican Council in installing an ironclad 
theory of the Bible as being in all parts in- 
errantly inspired or "dictated" by the Holy 
Spirit. In a letter bearing date of June 7, 
1870, he wrote: "It seems to me that a per- 
fectly new platform of doctrine is created, as 
regards our view of Scripture, by these new 
canons — so far as this, that if their primary 
and surface meaning is to be evaded, it must 
be by a set of explanations heretofore not 
necessary." 28 At a later date (1883) Newman 
gave open expression to the view that an 
occasional error in subordinate matters of fact, 
or obiter dicta, may be contained in the Bible. 
Herein, as his biographer admits, 29 he col- 
lided with the current theory of Roman ortho- 
doxy. That theory admits of no errors in the 
Scriptures, though some of its representatives 
make bold to grant in effect the presence of 
errors, and adjust themselves to the orthodox 
shibboleth by the unholy shift of refusing to ap- 
ply the name of errors to things which in simple 
and honest speech can be called nothing else. 

^Ward, II, pp. 294, 295. 29 Ibid., II, p. 504. 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 203 

It is seen, then, that the sticklers for the 
traditional type of Romanism had, whether to 
their credit or discredit, some real grounds 
of objection to Newman. From their point 
of view he was a faulty expositor and an in- 
judicious defender of the faith. They took a 
certain pride in his conversion, and hoped that 
it might be of substantial service to Roman 
propagandism; but still they were more or 
less disturbed by the tone of his writings, and 
were disposed to view his apologetic efforts 
with a shake of the head and a whisper of 
dissent. 

Ill 

Thus far we have considered not so much 
the merits of Newman's apologetic work as 
the distrust and opposition that he encoun- 
tered from the side of the very Romanism 
which he was so anxious to commend, especially 
to the men of the English race. We have 
now to consider how that work must be judged 
in the light of historical and rational evidences. 
In the execution of this task, account will 
need to be taken of some half-dozen of the 
apologist's writings, including the Essay on the 
Development of Christian Doctrine, the Apo- 
logia pro Vita Sua, Difficulties Felt by Angli- 
cans on Catholic Teaching, the Letter to 



204 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

Pusey, the Essay in Aid of a Grammar of 
Assent, and the Letter to the Duke of Norfolk. 

That Newman figures in these writings as a 
very ingenious and accomplished advocate, no 
unprejudiced reader will care to deny. But 
was he really successful in making out a case 
for Rome? Our conviction is that he fell so 
far short of this end that his apologetic efforts 
serve rather to emphasize the hopelessness of 
the cause which he advocated than to place 
it in a favorable light. Not one of his char- 
acteristic expedients will stand close examina- 
tion. 

Take his theory of doctrinal development, 
by which he sought to justify the ultimate 
Roman Catholic system in spite of its ap- 
parent contrast with the system in vogue in 
the early centuries. That he was right in 
admitting the fact of development cannot 
reasonably be disputed. As compared with 
such an apologist as Brownson he possessed 
an historic sense immensely superior. But 
has he given any credible demonstration that 
the development within Roman Catholic lines 
was normal, and resulted within those lines 
in dogmas certified to be infallible? It is far 
from discernible that he has done anything 
of the sort. His dealing with development 
is subject to challenge as practically ignoring 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 205 

a capital test of normal progress, namely, the 
maintenance of due proportion, the avoidance 
of excess. Advance from a given starting- 
point may be as gradual as you please; no 
great chasms may seem to be leaped in the 
onward movement; and yet the outcome may 
be utterly abnormal. Pharisaic Judaism started 
from a praiseworthy reverence for "the law" 
as the expressed will of Jehovah, and it ad- 
vanced by slow degrees toward its goal. But 
what was the goal? Legalism run mad, en- 
slavement to a detailed code, the spurning of 
all outside the people of the law as an unclean 
and outcast domain. Through simple excess 
the development ran into caricature and utter 
perversion. 

Newman does not formally deny that serious 
distortion of truth may result from a move- 
ment showing a high degree of continuity. 
He pays, however, no adequate attention to 
this liability. Indeed, he may be said to make 
a mock of it in one or another connection. 
This holds of his representation of the honors 
paid progressively to the Virgin Mary. 
"Prayers for the faithful departed," he says, 
"may be found in the early liturgies, yet with 
an indistinctness which included the blessed 
Virgin and the martyrs in the same rank with 
the imperfect Christians whose sins were yet 



206 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

unexpiated; and succeeding times might keep 
what was exact and supply what was defi- 
cient." 30 When it is remembered that "suc- 
ceeding times" reverenced Mary as the crowned 
queen of heaven, who is so far from needing 
prayers that all are contrariwise dependent 
upon the invincible efficacy of her inter- 
cessions, it evidently requires a remarkable 
mental feat to unite the extremes — the habit 
of mind which permitted prayers for Mary 
and the habit of mind which rules them out 
as appallingly incongruous or sacrilegious. If 
this is to be called legitimate development, 
then evidently no development can forfeit 
that title by bringing in the contradictory of 
its starting-point. A later reference of New- 
man to views about Mary in the early church 
is by no means calculated to modify the im- 
pression that it is only by an abusive applica- 
tion of the idea of development that our 
apologist can use it to justify later Roman 
doctrine and practice. In the "Letter to 
Pusey on Occasion of His Eirenicon" he admits 
that such eminent fathers as Basil, Chrysostom, 
and possibly also Cyril of Alexandria, at- 
tributed to Mary certain actual faults in con- 
duct. To this list of fathers he ought to have 
added Irenaeus, of the second century and 

3° Essay on Development, 1,846, p. 354, 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 207 

Origen of the third. 31 He ought, furthermore, 
to have noticed that theologians found it 
easier to exempt Mary from actual faults 
than from inheritance of the Adamic taint, 
or original sin, as is illustrated by instances 
of great doctors who asserted the latter while 
rejecting the former. 

Duly weighing the significance of these 
facts, what inference could anyone draw but 
that in the conviction of the early church — 
the same church which reckoned Mary among 
the imperfect dead — there was so little of a 
basis for the modern dogma of the immaculate 
conception that the very opposite of such a 
basis was present? Development of the kind 
which installed this dogma, we submit, refutes 
the claim of the Roman system, as involving 
not a perfecting, but a denial, of the original 
type. 

On the subject of the papacy likewise, New- 
man's attempt to apply the notion of develop- 
ment must be regarded as a very inadequate 
apologetic expedient. Advance in official pre- 
rogatives might be legitimate up to a certain 
point, but failing to stop at that point might 
eventuate in a sovereignty which robs intellect 
and conscience of their proper functions, and 

31 Irenseus, Cont. Haer., iii, 16. 7; Origen, In Luc, Horn, 
xvi. 



208 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

virtually obtrudes a limited and peccable man 
into the place which belongs to Almighty God 
alone. That Newman has shown that the 
concentration of authority in the Bishop of 
Rome stopped at the right point, is by no 
means in evidence. In the language already 
cited — "Christianity developed in the form, 
first, of a Catholic, then of a papal church" — 
he as much as declared that there was no 
genuine pope in the early church. To the 
like effect is his statement that in the post- 
apostolic age "first the power of the bishop 
displayed itself, and then the power of the 
pope." 32 As respects the dogma of papal 
infallibility, he expressed grave doubt whether 
the popes themselves had any clear under- 
standing of it in the time of Cyprian. 33 On 
the other hand, as has been noticed, he testified 
that half of the Catholic world was in fright 
before the image of pontifical sovereignty set 
up in the Vatican Council. What assurance 
does he furnish us that the transition from 
the essentially nonpapal regime of the early 
church to the unqualified absolutism dog- 
matically asserted in the Vatican decrees was 
wrought out by a legitimate development? 
None that is not pitiably inadequate to the 

32 Essay on Development, 1846, p. 165. 
33 Ward, II, p. 378. 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 209 

demand. He gives a list of facts indicative 
of a growing recognition of the importance of 
the Roman bishop. 34 But these facts, so far 
as related to the ante-Nicene period, are few 
in number and very limited in significance, 
while in the post-Nicene period the record of 
the ecumenical councils shows to a demonstra- 
tion that the position accorded to the bishop 
of Rome, in the deliberate judgment of the 
church as a whole, was at a vast remove from 
the unlimited monarchy decreed by the Vati- 
can Council. For both the ante-Nicene and 
the post-Nicene periods the facts cited by the 
apologist give no valid evidence as to the 
original or divinely appointed constitution of 
the church, being such as would naturally be 
evolved in the progress of the episcopate from 
a comparatively undifferentiated state toward 
an aristocratic or patriarchate system. In 
that evolution Rome, as a great world-center, 
would inevitably secure to its episcopal repre- 
sentative a certain advantage over all rivals. 
But an explanation of this kind is not a dog- 
matic justification of what occurred in the 
patristic period, and much less of the scheme 
of papal absolutism which pope and Jesuits 
succeeded in promulgating in the second half 
of the nineteenth century. In framing his 

34 Essay on Development, 1878, pp. 157-165. 



210 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

argument Newman is much too easy-going. 
He cannot be said to have wrestled at all 
seriously with the staggering objections to 
papal supremacy and infallibility which are 
embodied in the decisions of councils and in 
the deliverances and conduct of popes. 35 In 
the face of these unyielding objections, it is 
vain for him to appeal, as he does, 36 to the 
need of the continued presence of an infallible 
guide. Convenience, real or fancied, cannot 
be allowed to overrule the evidence of facts. 

An occasion for a special turn in his apology 
for papal supremacy and infallibility was given 
to Newman by Gladstone's impeachment of 
the Vatican decrees as placing civil allegiance 
at the mercy of a foreign autocrat. In the 
reply rendered to the eminent statesman there 
are two considerations which call in particular 
for comment. 37 On the one hand, he con- 
tended that papal manifestoes to which the 
character of infallibility attaches are very 
rarely issued; on the other hand, he urged 
that the determination of the scope of in- 
fallibility falls properly to the schola theo- 

3B For fuller evidence see the present writer's Sacerdotal- 
ism in the Nineteenth Century, pp. 137-221. 

38 Essay on Development, 1846, pp. 126, 127; Apologia, 
1887, p. 245. 

^The reply was in the form of a "Letter to the Duke of 
Norfolk." 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 211 

logorum, the body of doctrinal teachers in the 
church, which may be expected to pay good 
heed to the demands of sobriety. Neither 
consideration, however, affords security against 
interference with Roman Catholic allegiance. 
No one can prescribe how often a pontiff 
invested with absolute authority shall indulge 
in the luxury of an ex cathedra or "infallible" 
decree. Moreover, the obligation to obey is 
not limited to utterances that conform to 
this description. As Newman himself admits, 
Catholics are bound to give heed to any ad- 
ministrative requirement of the pope, and 
cannot plead conscience as excusing them from 
obedience except in cases so extraordinary as 
to be practically out of the field of expectation. 
"Obedience to the pope," he says, "is what is 
called 'in possession'; that is, the onus probandi 
of establishing a case against him lies, as in 
all cases of exception, on the side of conscience." 
As to the schola theologorum, plain logic would 
seem to dictate that it would effect little or 
nothing in the direction of restricting the 
sovereignty of a pope formally declared to be 
possessed of an independent infallibility. Then, 
too, historic fact comes in with its demon- 
stration. Leo XIII emphasized the instru- 
mental relation of theological faculties to papal 
sovereignty by a most determined effort to 



212 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

enthrone Thomas Aquinas over their teaching, 
and Pius X most emphatically reminded them 
of their subservient position by requiring them 
to submit for approval the text of their lec- 
tures in advance of their delivery. It seems, 
accordingly, that Newman failed also in this 
connection to meet the demands of effective 
apology. If he had urged that Roman Cath- 
olics, in the main, could be trusted not to 
sacrifice civil allegiance to the demands of 
obedience to the pope, he would have said 
something practically pertinent to the issue; 
but, of course, in theory such an affirmation, as 
leaving no bar to papal aggressions except the 
probable inconsistency of the pope's subjects, 
would have been very awkward and troublesome. 
Among all his apologetic writings the Essay 
in Aid to a Grammar of Assent was the one 
on which Newman expended most pains, and 
he probably regarded it as of the greatest 
significance. There can be no doubt also that 
he was persuaded that it was adapted to 
fulfill a defensive function, not merely for 
theistic or for Christian faith in general, but 
for the Roman Catholic system in particular. 
Indeed, he has said that the scope of its argu- 
ments from beginning to end is the truth of 
the Catholic religion, 38 and by "Catholic" he 

38 Note appended, December, 1880. 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 213 

undoubtedly meant Roman Catholic. Now, 
an examination of the treatise shows that a 
large part of it has no bearing in good logic 
upon the truth even of Christianity in gen- 
eral, and that the part of it which makes for 
the truth of Roman Catholicism is too meager 
to convince any one not thoroughly predis- 
posed to be convinced. The first half of this 
proposition finds its warrant in the fact that 
much space is given to an exposition of the 
bare method by which subjective certainty, or 
personal assurance, is gained. In dealing with 
this theme, Newman emphasizes the considera- 
tion that the real grounds of conviction are 
by no means confined to definitely formulated 
or formulable reasons. "I think it is the 
fact," he says, "that many of our most ob- 
stinate and reasonable certitudes depend on 
proofs which are informal and personal, which 
baffle our powers of analysis, and cannot be 
brought under logical rule, because they can- 
not be submitted to logical statistics." 39 It 
is essentially this point of view which he 
subsumes under the illative sense, denoting by 
the singular phrase, according to his biographer, 
"the power of spontaneous action in human 
reason, whereby it draws its conclusions from 
premises of which it is only in part explicitly 

8 »Grammar of Assent, 1870, p. 289. 



214 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

conscious, and judges those conclusions to be 
warranted." 40 That Newman here describes a 
process which often is exemplified in judg- 
ments of truth, need not be denied. But what 
he offers is mere psychological description, and 
psychological description by itself has no com- 
petency to evolve a trustworthy standard or 
to validate any particular subject-matter. The 
method which he elucidates can just as well 
be thought of as operating within the bounds 
of Mohammedanism, Buddhism, or any other 
namable system, as within the limits of 
Christianity. Doubtless Newman does bring 
forward some special grounds of faith in 
Christianity; but they are such as are or- 
dinarily contained in handbooks of Christian 
evidences, and stand in no organic connection 
with the more characteristic portions of his 
book. As respects credible proof of Roman 
Catholicism, we look in vain for the first 
installment. Certainly, no such installment is 
found in the assumption of an "illative sense"; 
for Newman admits (pp. 368, 369) that this 
operated in the estimate of the Bible current 
among Protestants in the sixteenth century, 
but yet in no trustworthy manner, as being 
based on mistaken elements of thought. What 
shall guarantee that its working in the minds 

40 Ward, II, pp. 262, 263. 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 215 

of Roman Catholics shall be any less fallible? 
Our apologist does not inform us, unless his 
representation that Roman Catholic popula- 
tions have an apprehension of religious ob- 
jects so vivid as closely to resemble actual 
sight, 41 is to be taken as affording the needed 
information. There is no adequate reason, 
however, for taking the given representation 
as in any wise fulfilling that function. It has 
in truth no apologetic significance. In the 
absence of a well-developed critical faculty, 
there is a certain tendency to visualize the 
objects which appeal strongly to feeling and 
imagination. So the forms of the fairy-world 
into which the child is inducted are often quite 
real to him. So the ghost-world is felt by 
many a pagan most intimately to environ his 
life. Among Protestant Christians also, as is 
clearly brought out in such a book as that of 
Professor James on the Varieties of Religious 
Experience, there has been a numerous com- 
pany of pietists who have possessed the ob- 
jects of religion in the "form of quasi-sensible 
realities." We cannot admit, therefore, that 
Newman has made here any valid point for 
Romanism. As remarked above, the whole 
treatise is singularly wanting in material 

"Grammar of Assent, p. 53. Compare Difficulties Felt 
by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching, 1850, pp. 236ff. 



216 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

adapted to convince anyone of the truth of 
Roman Catholicism except the party already 
predisposed to be convinced. 

An underlying skepticism, that is, in the 
philosophic order, has been charged against the 
Grammar of Assent. Newman, it is con- 
tended, shows a radical distrust of reason, 
and to save himself from the quicksands of 
unbelief feels obliged to cling to the platform 
of infallible authority. A judgment to this 
effect was rendered in very emphatic form by 
A. M. Fairbairn. 42 For ourselves, while ad- 
mitting that there is some ground for this 
criticism, we are not inclined to give it much 
prominence. What strikes us is the essentially 
abortive character of the treatise so far as it 
was designed to be an apology for Roman 
Catholicism. 

It would not be impertinent, did our space 
permit, to refer to the exemplification which 
Newman gave of the effect of taking charac- 
teristic Roman postulates into his mind. On 
this score he has furnished undesigned testi- 
mony against the system which it was his 
ruling ambition to champion. Let one topic 
suffice for illustration, namely, that of religious 
toleration. What should we expect of a man 
of his antecedents and native kindliness of 



^Catholicism, Roman and Anglican. 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 217 

heart except an unequivocal advocacy of toler- 
ance and an outspoken reprobation of persecu- 
tion for the cause of religion? We fail, however, 
to find anything of the sort in his writings. 
He has bowed his neck to ecclesiastical au- 
thority; and ecclesiastical authority, he seems 
to have felt, was on record in favor of religious 
persecution where it could be made practically 
effective for the Roman interest. In writing 
to Sir John Acton, in 1862, he noticed that 
Leo X reprobated Luther's declaration, "To 
burn heretics is contrary to the will of the 
Spirit;" also that Pius VI condemned the 
general denial of ecclesiastical punishments. 
He added: "I hold, till better instructed, that 
the church has a right to make laws and to 
enforce them with temporal punishments." 43 
In 1884, in reply to an inquiry by Mark Patti- 
son, he wrote: "On consideration I find it a 
duty to answer your question to me about 
toleration. I am obliged to say that what 
Catholics hold upon it, I hold with them." 44 
His remark on the damnatory clause in the 
so-called Athanasian Creed is in no wise 
discordant with the gist of these deliverances. 45 
The necessary conclusion is that Newman, 
whatever he might have favored in practice, 

«Ward, I, p. 640. 44 Ibid., II, p. 482. 

^Grammar of Assent, p. 135. 



218 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

accepted in principle the papal platform in 
favor of religious intolerance and persecution. 

IV 

It has been seen in the first part of this 
essay that Newman's style of apology met 
in his own day with no small measure of dis- 
paragement in Roman Catholic circles. More 
recently a very potent occasion for discrediting 
his work has been furnished by the Modern- 
ist movement, which Pius X anathematized as 
embracing the essence of all heresies. Doubt- 
less in any fair judgment it must be admitted 
that Newman's position is in important par- 
ticulars vastly distinguished from that of 
leading Modernists. He had no thought of 
seriously abridging the historical basis of the 
New Testament, or of reducing the formulated 
dogmas of the church to the plane of symbolical 
expressions into which a continually changing 
significance, corresponding with the demands 
of the age, can be imported. Nevertheless, he 
furnished antecedents to the Modernists, and 
they have not been backward in appealing to 
him as a forerunner. Especially have they 
claimed that the most fruitful conception in 
their scheme, the idea of doctrinal develop- 
ment, was derived from him as from no other. 
Referring to the effective working of this idea, 



JOHN HENRY NEWMAN 219 

Tyrrell has testified: "The solidarity of New- 
manism with Modernism cannot be denied. 
Newman might have shuddered at the progeny, 
but it is none the less his." 46 Again, a bond of 
association between Newman and the Modern- 
ists appears, as has been noticed, in the agree- 
ment of his conviction with theirs on the 
need of an enlarged function of the laity in 
the church; so that the pontifical reprobation 
of "laicism" in the encyclical Pascendi gregis 
unavoidably reflects back upon the great 
English convert. Once more, the scope which 
Newman assigned to the subjective factor in 
judging was capable of lending support to the 
Modernist exaltation of the feelings and intu- 
itions springing out of the inner life, as against 
both metaphysical proofs and any forms of 
mere external attestation. 47 

In view of these points of association, it 
follows inevitably that official Romanism, as 
deeming it necessary to extirpate Modernism, 
root and branch, can regard Newman with 
very little complacency, and must wish to 
restrict the circle of his influence. Unless the 
trend of Roman administration is to undergo 
a marvelous reversal, the cloud which he 



^The Hibbert Journal, January, 1908. 
47 See the declaration of the Italian Modernists in the 
Programme of Modernism, 1908, pp. 98, 99. 



220 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

thought had been lifted forever, with his ad- 
vancement to the cardinalate, must continue 
to cast its shadow. The ampler measure of 
appreciation is likely to be exhibited in a 
province where a larger catholicity obtains 
than in the sphere of official Romanism. In 
the future, as in the past, broadminded Prot- 
estants will doubtless be disposed to apprize 
Newman at no mean figure on the score of 
his literary gift, his poetic sensibility, and his 
deep and constant religious aspiration. As 
respects his distinctively intellectual contribu- 
tions to his age, their estimate will be quite 
humble. They will recognize that, while he 
had some points of superiority to the ordinary 
Roman dogmatist, he was too little acquainted 
with his age both on the philosophical and the 
critical side, and was too scantily endowed 
with penetrating insight into the conditions of 
great problems, to be qualified to exercise any 
large or permanent intellectual mastery. 



ESSAY VIII 

THE TRUTH AND THE ERROR OF 
MYSTICISM 



ESSAY VIII 

THE TRUTH AND THE ERROR OF 
MYSTICISM 

The title does not imply that mysticism is 
intrinsically a mixture of truth and error, 
but only that, as historically known, it gives 
occasion for the recognition of both elements 
or aspects. The proper suggestion is that 
this form of thought and feeling requires to be 
closely guarded in order to maintain a thor- 
oughly normal character. 

In respect of the compass which is to be 
assigned to the term "mysticism," it is scarcely 
feasible to appeal to a perfectly definite stand- 
ard. Usage, however, gives a general sanction 
to certain limitations. Most writers on the 
theme do not regard it as any part of their 
task to dwell on all sorts of manifestations of 
a sense for the mystery pertaining to man's 
life and environment. They give no more 
than a passing reference to the crude magic 
which is native to uncultured tribes and which 
often persists in the face of advancing civiliza- 
tion; to the fanciful occultism which is careless 
of all rational proportion between means and 
ends and runs into swollen pretense; to the 

223 



224 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

arbitrary word-mysticism which ineptly assigns 
great potency to special collocations of letters 
and syllables. As compared with these schemes 
so-called theosophy is acknowledged to have a 
subject-matter that is proximate to that of 
mysticism. It is understood, however, that 
theosophy, generally speaking, is distinguished 
from mysticism in that it is largely given to 
dogmatic details of a cosmological order, and 
so tends to a relative subordination of the 
experiential element. 

In order to indicate the sense which is more 
commonly assigned to the topic of mysticism 
we subjoin the following list of definitions: 

"The word 'mysticism' expresses the type of 
religion which puts the emphasis on immediate 
awareness of relation with God, on direct and 
intimate consciousness of the Divine Presence. 
It is religion in its most acute, intense, and 
living stage." 

"Mysticism is the immediate feeling of the 
unity of the self with God, the endeavor to 
fix the immediateness of the life in God as 
such, abstracted from all intervening helps and 
channels whatsoever." 

"The truly mystical may be summed up as 
simply a protest in favor of the whole man — 
the entire personality. It says that men can 
experience, and live, and feel, and do much 



MYSTICISM 225 

more than they can formulate, define, explain, 
or even fully express. Living is more than 
thinking." 

"The mystic believes in a mystic organ, 
which enables the devout or elect person to 
grasp what the world cannot understand, a 
capacity of soul which begins where reason 
and reasonable grounds end." 

"Mysticism is the assertion of an intuition 
which transcends the temporal categories of 
the understanding." 

"Mysticism is the pretension to know God 
without intermediary, and, so to speak, face 
to face. For mysticism whatever is between 
God and us hides him from us." 

"What the world calls mysticism is the 
science of ultimates, the science of self-evident 
reality, which cannot be reasoned about be- 
cause it is the object of pure reason or per- 
ception." 

"To be a mystic is simply to participate 
here and now in that real and eternal life, in 
the fullest, deepest sense which is possible 
to man." 

"Whoever prays, not merely with the belief, 
but with the immediate sense that God is 
with him and hears, is to that extent a mystic 
and a mystic of the highest type." 

"Mysticism claims to be able to know the 



226 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

Unknowable, without help from dialectics, and 
is persuaded that by means of love and will 
it reaches a point to which thought unaided 
cannot attain." 

"That we bear the image of God is the 
startingpoint, one might almost say the postu- 
late, of all mysticism. The complete union of 
the soul with God is the goal of all mysticism." 

"Religious mysticism may be defined as the 
attempt to realize the presence of the living 
God in the soul and in nature; or, more gener- 
ally, as the attempt to realize, in thought and 
feeling, the immanence of the temporal in the 
eternal and of the eternal in the temporal." 1 

Our own preference inclines to the following 
formula: Mysticism stands first of all for a 
very pronounced theory and faith relative to 
the possibilities of intercommunion between the 
soul and God; secondarily it stands for a very 
pronounced theory and faith respecting the 
significance of nature as the veil, robe, or 
symbolical expression of a transcendent reality. 

II 

Since mysticism in its foremost association, 



1 The citations are in order from the following: R. M. 
Jones, O. Pfleiderer, H. C. King, E. Lehmann, Lasson, Cousin, 
C. Patmore, Evelyn Underbill, J. B. Pratt, Re'ce'jac, Overton, 
W. R. Inge. 



MYSTICISM 227 

as dealing with the heights and depths of the 
inner religious experience, is our principal 
theme, we make room for only a brief state- 
ment relative to nature mysticism; and that 
we proceed to give at once. 

This order of mysticism finds expression in 
a twofold thesis. On the one hand, the truth 
is stressed that natural objects are symbols 
of spiritual realities; on the other hand, the 
thought is made prominent that nature is 
permeated with a divine presence. Charles 
Kingsley gave expression to the former thesis 
when he said, "The great mysticism is the 
belief, which is becoming every day stronger 
with me, that all symmetrical natural objects 
are types of some spiritual truth or existence." 
The same thesis is put in still more emphatic 
form in this sentence of R. L. Nettleship: 
"The true mysticism is the belief that every- 
thing, in being what it is, is symbolic of some- 
thing more." As a graphic putting of a kindred 
proposition we may appropriately add these 
words of the Cambridge Platonist, John Smith: 
"God made the universe and all the creatures 
contained therein as so many glasses wherein 
he might reflect his own glory. Fie hath copied 
forth himself in the creation; and in this out- 
ward world we may read the lovely characters 
of the divine goodness, power, and wisdom." 



228 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

The companion thesis of nature mysticism — or 
that on the pervasive presence of God in the 
world— has been given expression, either formal 
or virtual, in a large proportion of the in- 
stances where deep piety and poetic sensibility 
have combined their incentives. 

So far as the Christian world is concerned, 
nature mysticism seems not to have been very 
largely represented before the modern period, 
or at least before the era of the Renaissance. 
Among the church Fathers Gregory of Nyssa 
is instanced as paying a measure of deference 
to this type of thought in his conception of 
the visible world as the garment and drapery 
of God. But neither with the Fathers nor the 
Scholastics do we find this point of view made 
prominent. First in the sixteenth century we 
note the beginning of a succession of writers 
who paid large deference to nature mysticism. 
To this category belong Agrippa of Nettesheim 
(1487-1535), Theophrastus Paracelsus (1493- 
1541), Valentine Weigel (1533-1588), and An- 
gelus Silesius (1624-1677). Excelling all of 
these in scope of influence was the shoemaker 
of Gorlitz, Jacob Boehme (1575-1624). A 
prominent feature in his system was the doc- 
trine of antitheses. "In Yes and No," he said, 
"all things consist"; and this point of view 
he did not hesitate to apply to God himself, 



MYSTICISM 229 

assuming that in him, as the other or counter- 
part of Spirit, a nature eternally subsists. 
With the antitheses of Boehme one will wish 
to compare the elaborate scheme of corre- 
spondences which was set forth by Swedenborg 
(1688-1772) in his mystical interpretation of 
the universe. Something of the same fertility 
and boldness in construction which were char- 
acteristic of Boehme and Swedenborg were 
shown by one who had the advantage of 
acquaintance with their writings, though not 
a close disciple of either, Louis Claude de 
Saint-Martin (1743-1803). Other names might 
be added to the present catalogue, and not 
with the least right that of Friedrich Wilhelm 
Joseph Schelling (1775-1854). Both in the 
second and the third stages of his philosophical 
development there was a strong infusion of 
nature mysticism in his thinking. 

As has been indicated, poetic sensibility 
affords a congenial ground for nature mysti- 
cism. This was marvelously illustrated by 
Francis of Assisi, and it is no meager illustra- 
tion which has been furnished by our modern 
poets. The words could be applied to a num- 
ber of them which have been used to charac- 
terize the viewpoint of Wordsworth: "He 
apprehended all things natural or human, as 
an expression of something which, while mani- 



230 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

fested in them, immeasurably transcended 
them." 

Ill 

Mysticism, in its most prominent and sig- 
nificant aspect, as respecting the inner life, 
has been represented to a very noticeable 
degree in the non-Christian world. Indeed, 
some of the cardinal examples of it in this 
domain have wrought effectively to supply 
terms and ideas to men who have figured prom- 
inently in the history of Christian mysticism. 
It will not be amiss, therefore, to include 
among our preliminary observations a few 
words on non-Christian illustrations of the 
theme in hand. 

In India both before and since the dawning 
of the Christian era there has been a great 
efflorescence of mysticism. It was a marked 
constituent of the Brahmanism which taught 
that Brahman, the indefinable Absolute, is the 
only real entity, and that the proper goal of 
the human spirit is to recognize its identity 
with Brahman and to be wholly absorbed in 
him. Buddhism pictured the goal in quite 
different terms, but nevertheless in a way 
which overreached plain understanding and 
ran into a mystical range; for, whatever mean- 
ing Gautama may have assigned to Nirvana — 



MYSTICISM 231 

the word expressive of the idea! destiny — his 
followers soon began, at least in large part, 
to construe it as denoting a state mysterious, 
transcendent, and not properly describable. 
As for modern Hinduism, besides the inheritance 
which it received from the older Brahmanism, 
as expressed in the Upanishads, it gives a 
certain scope to a mystical element in its 
strong emphasis on close union, by means of 
faith, love, and devotion, with a chosen deity. 

China is not a field where we should be 
inclined to look for mystics, and, in fact, it 
has not been comparable to India as respects 
this order of religious products. Still, we find 
here a full-blown mystic in Lao-tse, an older 
contemporary of Confucius, a deep-hearted 
pietist, who gave expression to an emphatic 
type of idealistic and quietistic mysticism, and 
has the honor of having inculcated the high 
ethical maxim which enjoins the returning of 
good for evil. 

The spirit of the Greeks with its predilection 
for the concrete, for objects sufficiently defined 
by form and color to serve a dramatic purpose, 
would not seem likely to afford much hos- 
pitality to mysticism. And in truth, if we 
were to take Homer as representing the Greek 
religion, we should be compelled to say that 
it harbored the mystical element to a very 



232 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

scanty degree. But Homer is no spokesman 
for the whole of Greek thought and feeling. 
A mystical element came in with the Dionysiac 
cult, and, being joined with somewhat of a 
speculative bent in the Orphic sect, passed 
on to a stage more capable of appealing to 
thoughtful people. Plato was not above 
taking account of the Orphists. In some re- 
spects, undoubtedly, he seems rather plainly 
contrasted with the typical mystic. He greatly 
emphasized the rightful supremacy of reason, 
the need of deferring to rational canons in all 
mental proceedings. He also gave such def- 
initeness of character to souls as is opposed 
to the notion of their being fused into any 
higher entity. But, on the other hand, in his 
doctrine of ideas he laid a basis for the in- 
ference that the highest in rank is the most 
general, and so encouraged a habit of construing 
God, or the Absolute, as beyond all specifica- 
tion of qualities, above all namable attributes. 
Plato himself put forth no such agnostic 
formula; but in Neo-Platonism it came to 
emphatic expression. Plotinus, the most dis- 
tinguished representative of this philosophy, 
writing in the third century, used the most 
unqualified terms in describing the transcend- 
ence of God, and also taught that the soul, in 
attaining unto the vision of this transcendent 



MYSTICISM 233 

Deity, must be lifted above all definable 
states and operations. These were viewpoints 
of far-reaching significance; for they came 
through the medium of Proclus, a follower of 
Plotinus, into the possession of a Christian 
writer of the sixth century, the so-called 
Dionysius, the Areopagite; and through him 
they were passed on and gave a tinge to a 
broad stream of Christian mysticism. 

Neo-Platonic mysticism was also fruitful 
within the Mohammedan domain. The prin- 
cipal representatives here were the Persian 
poets of the tenth and the following centuries, 
commonly referred to as the Sufi poets. As 
Mohammedans they had, of course, a very 
equivocal authority for the mystical trend in 
their effusions, since the Koran, in its dom- 
inant tone, stresses God's external sovereignty, 
and is more inclined to anthropomorphism than 
to mysticism. But they were not sticklers 
for authority. One of the greatest of them, 
Jalaluddin Rumi, said of his own practice: 

"I extracted the marrow of the Koran 
And flung the bone to the dogs." 

Eclectic and latitudinarian in temper, the Sufis 
were quite free to borrow whatever was con- 
genial to their poetic and idealistic bent. Pos- 
sibly they may have derived something from 



234 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

Hindu speculations. It is presumed, however, 
that the larger incentive came from Neo- 
Platonism. 

The affinity of these non-Christian forms of 
mysticism with pantheism is for the most part 
a very pronounced feature. The Brahmanical 
form was prodigal of formulas thoroughly 
pantheistic in essence. The Plotinian teaching, 
if not chargeable with being a downright 
pantheism, was at no great remove from the 
same in some of its representations. The Sufi 
poets, the Mohammedan heirs of the Plotinian 
doctrines, are commonly classed as pantheists. 
How was it with the Christian heirs of the 
same doctrines? That some of them were 
free to use forms of expression ill-guarded 
against pantheistic implications is quite un- 
deniable. How far the real thinking of any of 
them was affected by the pantheistic leaven 
remains for judicial inquiry. 

IV 

In enumerating grounds of appreciation of 
mysticism, more especially as developed within 
Christian bounds, it will not be impertinent to 
refer to the sanction contained in biblical 
precedent. If we take the term in the sense 
which has been characterized as according with 
its foremost association, it cannot well be 



MYSTICISM 235 

denied that it stands for something pretty 
liberally represented in the Bible. The Old 
Testament as a whole, it is true, exhibits no 
very distinct affinity for the mystical stand- 
point. There runs through it a rather sharp 
antithesis between God and man. While place 
is given to a noble conception of ethical fellow- 
ship between Jehovah and his obedient serv- 
ants, the more emphatic view of the interior 
union of the human soul with the divine 
source of its life is infrequently brought to 
view. A function is accredited to vision or 
trance, but the peculiar experience is made 
instrumental to some specific divine communi- 
cation rather than counted a means of tran- 
scendental union of its subject with God. 
First when Judaism came into contact with 
Greek speculation was a noticeable bent de- 
veloped in the direction of mysticism. 

In the New Testament religion, on the other 
hand, a considerable zone of the distinctive 
mystical teaching is apparent. The Johannine 
type clearly falls within that zone. Its affinity 
with mysticism is manifested in its doctrine 
of the Logos who is the light and the life of 
men; in its portrayal of a life union with the 
Redeemer under the figure of the vine and 
the branches; in its declaration about the 
Father and the Son coming to the believer 



236 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

and taking up their abode with him; in its 
description of the Comforter as an abiding 
guest and source of spiritual illumination; in 
its readiness to discover in the forms of nature 
symbols of spiritual truths; and finally in its 
tendency to transcend the standpoint of tem- 
poral succession and to view the eternal order 
as here and now exemplified in the true life. 
Indeed, there is very fair warrant for accept- 
ing this declaration: "The Gospel of St. John 
is the charter of Christian mysticism." 

The Johannine writings, however, are far 
from comprising the whole field of mysticism 
in the New Testament. Paul in his way was 
unquestionably as much of a mystic as was 
John. In fact, one and another writer has 
been willing to contend that, while John was 
specially affluent in phraseology adapted to the 
uses of mystics, in his fundamental thinking 
he was really less of a mystic than was the 
apostle to the Gentiles. The latter, it can be 
said with confidence, gave no less scope than 
did the former to the thought of the divine 
immanence. In his conception of the relation 
of Christ to the believer he offered a full equiv- 
alent for the Johannine Logos who was repre- 
sented as the life and the light of men. A 
precedent for the emphatic language of mysti- 
cism on the union of the human with the 



MYSTICISM 237 

divine can be found in various Pauline utter- 
ances, and notably in this strong testimony 
in the Epistle to the Galatians: "I live, and 
yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me." 

V 

A second ground of favorable judgment of 
mysticism is found in the vocation which it 
has fulfilled in providing an offset to the 
sacerdotal and ceremonial type of religion. 
In virtue of its animating spirit and cardinal 
points of view, it has been well fitted to fulfill 
an office of this kind. Placing the maximum 
stress upon the inner life, and magnifying the 
privilege of the believer to enter into immediate 
communion with God by the pathway of 
spiritual contemplation, it logically has tended 
to relegate priestly offices and ceremonial to 
a secondary rank. Doubtless instances can be 
pointed out where the intense and idealizing 
temper of the mystic has wrought to give an 
exaggerated meaning and value to ecclesiasti- 
cal offices and sacramental performances. In 
other instances, it must equally be admitted, 
it has carried the disparagement of visible 
means to an unhealthy extreme. But, taken 
in the aggregate, in spite of sundry aberra- 
tions, it can be credited with a useful office in 
opposing the externalization of religion and 



238 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

in checkmating an idolatrous estimate of 
ecclesiastical mechanism. The candid student 
of history cannot fail to recognize in the broad 
current of mysticism, which was started in 
the thirteenth century and which ran on near 
to the close of the fifteenth, a preparation for 
the Protestant Reformation. It is a matter 
of history that Luther was an appreciative 
student of the Theologia Germanica and of the 
writings of Tauler. It is also on record that 
he said, with pardonable extravagance, respect- 
ing the practical mystic John Wessel, that all 
his own doctrines might seem to have been 
taken from this fifteenth-century predecessor. 

VI 

It remains to mention a further ground for 
a favorable estimate of mysticism — and one 
not second to any — namely, the great treasure 
which its representatives have contributed to 
religious literature. In the line of rich spiritual 
maxims, teachings adapted to awaken and to 
satisfy the deepest aspirations of the human 
spirit, the mystics have placed all friends of 
earnest piety under profound obligation. No- 
where outside of the Bible will one find more 
quickening suggestions of the heights and 
depths of religious privilege and experience than 
in their writings. The compiler of a handbook 



MYSTICISM 239 

of the best spiritual maxims would be com- 
pelled to draw largely from their sayings. 
We cannot, we are convinced, more fitly utilize 
our space than by citing specimen sentences 
from a considerable list of mystical writers. 

Augustine (354-430), as the most compre- 
hensive personality among the church Fathers, 
was unquestionably much more than a mystic. 
It is also true that he did not assert the most 
emphatic thesis on possible union with God 
that can be found in Christian literature. 
Still, a mystical piety was no slight constituent 
in his inner life. Something of the trend of 
his thought and feeling may be gathered from 
the following utterances: "Thou hast formed 
us, O God, for thyself, and our hearts are 
restless till they rest in thee." "He loves thee 
too little who loves aught with thee, which 
he loves not for thee, O love, who ever burnest, 
and art never quenched." "The evangelist 
who presents Christ to us in a far loftier strain 
of teaching than all the others is also the 
one in whose narrative the Lord washes the 
disciples' feet. . . . Christ the Lord is a low 
gateway; he who enters by this gateway must 
humble himself, that he may be able to enter 
with head unharmed." 

Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153), while the 
advocate of a high range of mystical con- 



240 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

templation and experience, was also gifted with 
no scanty measure of practical spiritual wis- 
dom and poetic sensibility. Let the following 
sentences testify: "Like the sisters Martha and 
Mary, labor and meditation should dwell to- 
gether. When one falls from the light of 
meditation, he guards against sinking into the 
darkness of sin and the torpor of idleness by 
abiding in the light of good works." "Grief 
over sin is necessary if it be not constant; it 
must be broken by the more joyful remem- 
brance of the divine goodness, lest the heart 
grow hardened through sadness, and from 
despair perish more exceedingly." "Trust to 
one who has had experience. You will find 
something far greater in the woods than you 
will in books. Stones and trees will teach you 
that which you will never learn from masters. 
Think you not you can suck honey from the 
rock, and oil from the flinty rock? Do not 
the mountains drop sweetness? the hills run 
with milk and honey, and the valleys stand 
thick with corn?" 

From Eckhart (1260-1329), though specially 
distinguished for his bold elaboration of the 
speculative side of mysticism, we have some 
golden sentences in the practical order. Thus 
he says: "What a man has taken in by con- 
templation he pours out in love." "It is better 



MYSTICISM 241 

to feed the hungry than to see even such 
visions as St. Paul saw." "You need not go 
into a desert and fast; a crowd is often more 
lonely than a wilderness, and small things 
harder to do than great." "We should not 
think so much of what we do as of what we 
are. If we be good and wise, our works also 
will be well and wisely done. Thy deeds do 
not sanctify thee, but thou must sanctify thy 
deeds." "That a man has a restful and peace- 
ful life in God is good. That a man endures 
a painful life in patience, that is better; but 
that a man has his rest in the midst of a pain- 
ful life, that is best of all." "As little as the 
bright eye can endure aught that is foreign 
to it, so little can the pure soul bear anything 
in it, any stain on it that comes between it 
and God." 

John Tauler (1300-1361), as he was one of 
the greatest preachers of his age, was especially 
prolific in strong practical maxims. The fol- 
lowing may serve as specimens: "He who is 
too full of his own joys or sorrows to get be- 
yond himself can never come to know himself." 
"God takes a thousand times more pains with 
us than the artist with his picture, by many 
touches of sorrow and many colors of cir- 
cumstance, to bring man into the form that 
is the highest and noblest in his sight." "A 



242 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

thousand offenses which a man truly acknowl- 
edges and confesses himself to be guilty of are 
not so perilous as a single offense which thou 
wilt not recognize nor allow thyself to be 
convinced of." "He who seeks God, if he 
seeks anything beside God, will not find him." 
"There is no work so small, no art so mean, 
but it all comes from God and is a special 
gift of his. Thus let each do what another 
cannot do so well, and for love, returning gift 
for gift." "Our Lord did not rebuke Martha 
on account of her works, for they were holy 
and good; he reproved her on account of her 
anxiety." 

From the unknown author of the Theologia 
Germanica, who is supposed to have written in 
the fourteenth century, we have these sayings: 
"Knowledge and light profit nothing without 
love." "A true lover of God loveth him 
alike in having or in not having, in sweetness 
or in bitterness, in good report or in evil report. 
And therefore he standeth alike unshaken in 
all things, and at all seasons." "It has been 
said that there is of nothing so much in hell 
as of self-will. The which is true; for there is 
nothing else there than self-will; and if there 
were no self-will, there would be no devil 
and no hell." With this declaration may be 
compared the statement of the English mystic 



MYSTICISM 243 

Juliana of Norwich: "To me was showed no 
harder hell than sin." 

Ruysbroeck (1293-1381), one of the very 
foremost of the representatives of mysticism in 
the Netherlands, furnishes us with these worthy 
sayings: "It seems to me that to bathe oneself 
in humility is to bathe oneself in God, for 
God is the source of humility." "He who 
refers all things to the glory of God enjoys 
God in all things, and he sees in them the 
image of God." "We find nowadays many 
silly men who would be so interior and de- 
tached that they will not be active and helpful 
in any way in which their neighbors are in 
need. Know such men are neither hidden 
friends nor yet true servants of God, but are 
wholly false and disloyal; for none can follow 
his counsels but those who obey his laws." 

The English mystic Walter Hilton, who 
died in 1395, presents in his Scale of Perfec- 
tion an amiable type of piety. That he was 
not wanting in evangelical sentiment appears 
from the following sentences: "He that will 
serve God wisely and come to the perfect 
love of God, he will covet to have no other 
reward but him only. But then to have him 
may no creature deserve by his own travail 
or industry; for though a man could labor 
corporally and spiritually as much as could all 



244 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

the creatures that have ever been, yet could 
he not, for all that, only by his own working 
deserve to have God for his reward; for he is 
the sovereign bliss and endless goodness, and 
surpasseth without comparison all men's de- 
serts." "The lover of Jesus is his friend, not 
for that he deserveth it, but because Jesus of 
his merciful goodness maketh him his friend 
by true accord. And therefore to him he 
showeth his secrets, as to a true friend that 
pleaseth him by love, not serveth him through 
fear in slavery." 

The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis, 
(1380-1471) may be criticized as containing 
more of a monastic coloring than belongs to 
the truest ideal, but no criticism can count 
for much in the face of the wide ministry which 
the book has fulfilled. "The eternal thing in 
it," as has been well said, "is its calm and 
compelling revelation of the reality of the 
spiritual kingdom, and its complete sufficiency 
for the soul." We cite very briefly as follows: 
"Acquisition and increase of goods cannot help 
thee to peace. Neither can change of place 
avail. Thou mayest change thy situation, but 
thou canst not get away from the real evil 
which is thy own selfish will." "Nothing is 
sweeter than love, nothing stronger, nothing 
loftier, nothing broader, nothing pleasanter, 



MYSTICISM 245 

nothing fuller or better in heaven or in earth; 
for love is born of God and cannot rest save 
in God from whom it is derived." 

Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), whose public 
activity was on the same remarkable scale as 
her repute for sanctity, gave evidence of her 
religious insight by such sentences as these: 
* 'Whoso possesses true spiritual love must 
judge and take all things according to the 
will of God, and not according to that of men; 
and when he remains deprived of any spiritual 
consolation, he must at once think and say: 
This befalls me through the divine disposition, 
by the permission of God, who, in all the 
adversities he sends me, seeks and wills naught 
save my justification and salvation. And with 
this thought all bitter things will be rendered 
sweet." "No operation of the soul that fears 
with servile fear is perfect. . , . This fear pro- 
ceeds from the blindness of self-love; for as 
soon as the rational creature loves itself with 
sensitive self-love, it straightway fears. And 
this is the cause for which it fears: it has set 
its love and hope upon a weak thing, that 
has no firmness in itself, nor any stability, 
but passes like the wind." 

From Catherine of Genoa (1447-1510) we 
have these ardent sayings: "Man can truly 
know by continual experience that the love 



246 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

of God is our repose, our joy, and our life; and 
that self-love is but constant weariness, sadness, 
and a death of our true selves both in this 
world and in the next." "As the intellect 
reaches higher than speech, so does love reach 
higher than intellect." 

The Spanish mystic Teresa (1515-1582), 
though specially famed for her visions, was 
not lacking in sense for the practical side of 
religion, as is evidenced by these maxims: 
"Love consists not in having greater delights, 
but greater resolutions and desires of pleasing 
God in everything, and in endeavoring as 
much as possible not to offend him." "Be 
assured that the further you advance in the 
love of the neighbor, the more will you advance 
in the love of God likewise." "The love of 
God consists not in having the gift of tears, 
nor in receiving consolations and tenderness of 
devotion (which we may, however, desire and 
take comfort in); but in serving him with 
justice, fortitude, and humility; otherwise, it 
seems to me we should be receiving every- 
thing and giving nothing." 

Another Spanish mystic of the sixteenth 
century, John of the Cross (1542-1591), calls 
for an appreciative reference. The extent to 
which he demands the suppression of the 
natural life is indeed repellent, but his un- 



MYSTICISM 247 

sparing self-devotement elicits respect, and 
some of his instructions are worthy of record. 
Thus he says: "The soul whose will is divided 
among trifles is like water which never rises, 
because it has an outlet below, and is there- 
fore profitless." "If charity admits of envy 
at all, it is a holy envy that makes us grieve 
that we have not the virtues others have; 
but still rejoicing that they have them, and 
glad that others outstrip us in the race, we 
being so full of imperfections ourselves." 
"One good work or act of the will, wrought in 
charity, is more precious in the eyes of God 
than that which all the visions and revelations 
of heaven might effect. Many souls to whom 
visions have never come are incomparably 
more advanced in the way of perfection than 
others to whom many have been given." 

Reference has been made to Jacob Boehme 
(1575-1624) in the sketch of nature mysticism. 
We add here this single extract: "Like as the 
various flowers stand in the ground and grow 
side by side, not upbraiding one another about 
color, scent, or taste, but letting earth and 
sun, rain and wind, heat and cold, do what 
they like with them, all simply growing each 
according to his own disposition — so is it also 
with the children of God." 

Francis de Sales (1567-1622), if he did not 



248 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

often strike the deeper notes so greatly valued 
by the more hardy mystics, gave many devout 
advices which have earned the appreciation of 
a wide circle. "God requires," he says, "a 
faithful fulfillment of the merest trifle given 
us to do, rather than the most ardent aspira- 
tions for things to which we are not called." 
"To wish to play the ecstatic is an abuse. 
When we see a person who in prayer has 
ravishments by which he goes out from and 
mounts above himself in God, and yet has no 
ecstasies in life, that is, leads not a life lifted 
up and united to God by abnegation of worldly 
concupiscence, and mortification of natural will 
and inclination, by an interior meekness, sim- 
plicity, humility, and above all by a continual 
charity — then we may believe that all these 
ravishments are very doubtful and perilous; 
they are ravishments proper to make men 
wonder, but not to sanctify them." 

Molinos (1640-1697) taught a quietistic or- 
der of mysticism, which, however, was far 
from earning the sentence to life-long im- 
prisonment which was visited upon him in 
1687. The following are typical sayings: 
"Wouldst thou that the omnipotent King 
should enter into thy soul, thou must see to 
it that thy heart be pure, innocent, quiet, and 
free, unoccupied and empty, silent and meek." 



MYSTICISM 249 

"It concerns thee only to prepare thy heart 
like clean paper, whereon the Divine Wisdom 
may imprint characters to his own liking." 
"The Lord reposes only where quiet reigns 
and self-love is banished." 

Fenelon (1651-1715), a distinguished figure 
in the galaxy which adorned the age of Louis 
XIV, supplies us with a full treasury of choice 
sentiments. We make the following scanty 
selection: "Thou lovest like an infinite God 
when thou lovest; thou movest heaven and 
earth to save thy loved ones; thou becomest 
man, a babe, the vilest of men, covered with 
reproaches, dying with infamy, and under 
the pangs of the cross; all this is not too much 
for an infinite love." "This is the whole of 
religion — to get out of self and self-love in 
order to get into God." "Never should we so 
abandon ourselves to God as when he seems 
to abandon us. Let us enjoy light and con- 
solation when it is his pleasure to give them 
to us, but let us not attach ourselves to his 
gifts, but to him; and when he plunges us into 
the night of pure faith, let us still press on 
through the agonizing darkness." "The fervor 
of devotion does not depend upon yourself; 
all that lies in your power is the direction of 
your will." 

Madame Guyon (1648-1717) presents us 



250 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

with less variety of spiritual maxims than that 
supplied by Fenelon, but is represented by not 
a few sayings expressive of a deep strain of 
piety, "A direct struggle," she says, "with 
distractions and temptations rather serves to 
augment them, and withdraws the soul from 
that adherence to God which should ever be 
its sole occupation. We should simply turn 
away from the evil, and draw yet nearer to 
God." "The soul ascends to God by giving 
up self to the destroying and annihilating 
power of divine love." "The same things 
which would be profitable when God, by his 
Spirit, draws them, become quite otherwise 
when of ourselves we enter into them. This 
appears to me so clear, that I prefer being a 
whole day with the worst in obedience to God, 
before living an hour with the best, only from 
choice and human inclination." 

A school which flourished in England during 
the period of the eminent French mystics from 
whom we have just cited is known as the Cam- 
bridge Platonists. This school, though not as 
a whole representative of a radical type of 
mysticism, may be credited with a rather 
positive affiliation with the mystical standpoint. 
Among its members were John Smith (1618- 
1652), Benjamin Whichcote (1609-1683), and 
Henry More (1614-1687). The first named 



MYSTICISM 251 

exhibited a specially fine genius for a cogent 
expression of the deeper spiritual truths. We 
may judge of the combination of balance with 
elevation in his thinking from such sentences 
as these: "Good men are content and ready 
to deny themselves for God. I mean, not 
that they should deny their own reason, as 
some would have it, for that were to deny a 
beam of divine light, and so to deny God, 
instead of denying ourselves for him." "The 
soul itself hath its sense, as well as the body; 
and therefore David when he would teach us 
how to know what the divine goodness is, 
calls not for speculation but sensation, 'Taste 
and see how good the Lord is.' " "True re- 
ligion never finds itself out of the infinite sphere 
of the Divinity; and wherever it finds beauty, 
harmony, goodness, love, ingenuity, holiness, 
justice, and the like, it is ready to say, 'Here 
and there is God'; wheresoever any such per- 
fections shine out, a holy mind climbs up by 
these sunbeams and raises itself up to God." 

William Law (1686-1761) appears as a 
rather pronounced mystic in one class of his 
writings. In his rating of the office of reason 
he took a less eligible position than that repre- 
sented by John Smith; but otherwise he much 
resembled the Cambridge Platonists in the 
tone of his discourse. As illustrative passages 






252 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

we choose these: "A soul may be as fully fixed 
in selfishness through a fondness of sensible 
enjoyments in spiritual things, as by a fond- 
ness for earthly satisfactions. . . . These inward 
delights are not holiness, they are not piety, 
they are not perfection, but they are God's 
gracious allurements and calls to seek after 
holiness and perfection." "Would you know 
the blessing of all blessings, it is this love of 
God dwelling in your soul, and killing every 
root of bitterness, which is the pain and tor- 
ment of earthly selfish love. For all wants 
are satisfied, all disorders of nature are re- 
moved, no life is any longer a burden, every 
day is a day of peace, everything you meet 
becomes a help to you, because everything you 
see and do is all done in the sweet gentle 
element of love." 

The name of Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) 
is apt to suggest the keen and relentless dia- 
lectician and dogmatist. But another asso- 
ciation is appropriate, since he both set a high 
value on the religious affections, and personally 
was not wholly a stranger to mystical experi- 
ences. We find him remarking: "It is evident 
that religion consists so much in holy affections 
as that without holy affection in the heart 
there is no true religion. No light in the under- 
standing is good which does not produce holy 



MYSTICISM 253 

affection in the heart; no habit or principle in 
the heart is good which has no such exercise; 
and no external fruit is good which does not 
proceed from such exercises." "The sweetest 
joys and delights I have experienced have not 
been those that have arisen from a hope of 
my own good estate, but in a direct view of 
the glorious things of the gospel. When I 
enjoy this sweetness it seems to carry me above 
thoughts of my own estate." "The beauties of 
nature are really emanations or shadows of the 
excellency of the Son of God. So that, when 
we are delighted with flowery meadows and 
gentle breezes of wind, we may consider that 
we see only the emanations of the sweet benev- 
olence of Jesus Christ. When we behold the 
fragrant rose and lily, we see his love and 
purity. So the green trees and fields and sing- 
ing of birds are the emanations of his infinite 
joy and benignity. The easiness and natural- 
ness of trees and vines are shadows of his beauty 
and loveliness. The crystal rivers and mur- 
muring streams are the footsteps of his favor, 
grace, and beauty. When we behold the light 
and brightness of the sun, the golden edges of 
an evening cloud, or the beauteous bow, we 
behold the adumbrations of his glory and 
goodness; and in the blue sky, of his mildness 
and gentleness," 



254 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

On some accounts it would seem to be a 
misadventure to give John Wesley (1703-1791) 
any place among mystics. According to his 
own confession he felt, indeed, an attraction 
toward them, at an early period in his career; 
but also according to his own conviction he 
was happily saved from this perilous leaning, 
and we find him in his maturer years passing 
some emphatic criticisms on prominent ex- 
ponents of mysticism. It is to be noticed, 
furthermore, that the enormous burden of 
practical activity which was upon him, in 
founding and administering his societies, lim- 
ited his opportunities both for cultivating the 
contemplative life and for bringing its view- 
points to fine and carefully considered expres- 
sion. Still, he cherished very ardent beliefs 
as to the possibilities of illumination, transfor- 
mation, and enrichment of human souls by the 
indwelling Spirit of God. In this sense an 
affiliation with mysticism can be credited to 
him. We choose for citation brief passages 
illustrative of three points — the intuitive prin- 
ciple to be recognized in faith, the office to be 
accorded to reason alongside this principle, and 
the primacy of love. "Faith," he writes, "is 
that divine evidence whereby the spiritual 
man discerneth God and the things of God. 
It is with regard to the spiritual world what 



MYSTICISM 255 

sense is with regard to the natural. It is the 
spiritual sensation of every soul that is born 
of God." "We not only allow, but earnestly 
exhort all who seek after true religion to use 
all the reason which God has given them in 
searching out the things of God. . . . God moves 
man, whom he has made a reasonable creature, 
according to the reason which he has given 
him. He moves him by his understanding, as 
well as by his affections, by light as well as by 
heat. He moves him to do this or that by 
conviction full as often as by desire." "This 
love [of God and the neighbor] we believe to 
be the medicine of life, the never-failing remedy 
for all the evils of a disordered world, for all 
the miseries and vices of men. Wherever this 
is, there are virtue and happiness going hand 
in hand. There is humbleness of mind, gentle- 
ness, long-suffering, the whole image of God, 
and at the same time a peace that passeth all 
understanding, a joy unspeakable and full of 
glory." 

John G. Fichte (1762-1814), however closely 
associated with subtle philosophical specula- 
tion, is rightly mentioned in connection with 
mysticism. Not only did he express his appre- 
ciation of the Johannine type by formal state- 
ment but also by his profound emphasis on 
the idea of eternal life as begun in the present. 



256 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

"I am connected," he says, "with the Infinite 
One, and there is nothing real, lasting, im- 
perishable in me, but the voice of conscience 
and my free obedience to it. By the first the 
spiritual world bows down to me and embraces 
me as one of its members; by the second I 
raise myself into it; and the infinite Will 
unites me with it, and is the source of it and 
me. ... I am immortal, imperishable, eternal, 
as soon as I form the resolution to obey the 
laws of eternal reason: I am not merely des- 
tined to become so. . . . What we call heaven 
does not lie only on the other side of the grave; 
it is diffused over nature here, and its light 
dawns on every pure heart." "Wouldst thou 
behold God face to face, as he is in himself? 
Seek him not beyond the skies; thou canst 
find him wherever thou art. Behold the life 
of his devoted ones, and thou beholdest him; 
resign thyself to him, and thou wilt find him 
within thine own breast." 

It would not be difficult to name respects 
in which Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) 
was quite remote from the typical mystic. 
But there is no denying that a mystical phase 
bulks large in his writings. Equally it is im- 
possible to deny that this in some of its ex- 
pressions has a distinctly pantheistic cast. 
However, no mean compensation is supplied 



MYSTICISM 257 

in the mighty stress which he awards, whether 
with full consistency or not, to the ethical 
interest. Illustration is afforded in such sen- 
tences as these: "We lie open on one side 
to the deeps of the spiritual nature, to the 
attributes of God. Justice we see and know, 
Love, Freedom, Power. These natures no man 
ever got above, but they tower over us, and 
most in the moment when our interests tempt 
us to wound them." "We are made of the 
moral sentiment, the world is built by it, 
things endure as they share it, all beauty, all 
intelligence, all health exist by it." "Whilst 
a man seeks good ends, he is strong by the 
whole strength of nature. In so far as he 
roves from these ends he bereaves himself of 
power or auxiliaries; his being shrinks out of 
all remote channels, he becomes less and less, 
a mote, a point, until absolute badness is abso- 
lute death." 

VII 

The above exposition affords, we are con- 
fident, a clear demonstration that it is no 
meager showing which can be made for the 
favorable side of mysticism. But, on the 
other hand, it is in evidence that certain 
tendencies adverse to the best religious ideal 
are liable to attach themselves to mysticism 



258 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

These tendencies may not belong to mysticism 
as such. It may, therefore, be illegitimate to 
use them without large qualifications as a 
ground for estimating this type of religious 
thought and experience. Nevertheless, mys- 
ticism, as known to us in history, has so often 
given exhibition of the tendencies in question 
that it is only reasonable to conclude that it 
is characterized by a certain liability to them. 
So matter is provided for a picture of mysti- 
cism on the adverse side. 

And here there is occasion to mention first 
of all the extreme emphasis on the divine 
transcendence which has so often come to 
expression. On the part of Christian mystics 
this seems to have been very largely an in- 
heritance from Neo-Platonism. Plotinus, as 
has already been observed, went to the limit 
on this theme. He placed ultimate being above 
all categories. "There is no name for it because 
nothing can be asserted of it. . . . We can say 
what it is not, but we cannot say what it is. . . . 
God is something which is not essence, but 
beyond essence." The pseudo Dionysius repro- 
duced without abridgment the agnostic phrases 
of Plotinus, referring to God as superessential 
indetermination, superrational unity, super- 
essential essence, above all existence. "He 
is neither darkness nor light nor truth nor 



MYSTICISM 259 

error; He can neither be affirmed nor denied; 
nay, though we may affirm or deny the things 
that are beneath him, we can neither affirm 
nor deny him; for the perfect and sole cause 
of all is above all affirmation, and that which 
transcends all is above all subtraction, ab- 
solutely separate and beyond all that is." 
Language quite parallel to that of Dionysius 
was employed by Erigena in stressing the divine 
transcendence. The more noted mystics of the 
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were quite 
free to use equivalent terms. Eckhart, Tauler, 
the author of the Theologia Germanica, and 
Ruysbroeck roundly affirmed the inapplicability 
to God of any known categories or attributes. 
Discriminating between the Godhead and God 
as expressed in the Trinity, they assimilate 
the former to a distinctionless void. Thus we 
read in the Theologia Germanica: "To God 
as Godhead appertains neither will, nor knowl- 
edge, nor manifestation, nor anything that we 
can name, or say, or conceive"; and Ruys- 
broeck says in substance: "Beyond and above 
this plane of divine differentiation [in the 
Trinity] is the superessential world, transcend- 
ing all conditions, inaccessible to thought — the 
measureless solitude of the Godhead." 

What better can such theories be called than 
aberrations distinctly foreign to sound thinking 



260 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

and true religion? They involve the melan- 
choly conclusion that revelation does not 
reveal; in other words, that there is and can 
be no true revelation of God. They carry the 
inference that greatness is to be measured by 
indefiniteness, so that the greatest in the rank 
of being must be analogous to empty space or 
to the formless matter named in antique 
philosophy. They imply that the impersonal 
is more basal and wealthy than the personal — 
a warped and unfounded assumption, as was 
noted in the essay on pantheistic theories. 
As respects the distinction between the God- 
head and God we only stop to note that, 
taken in the sense of the writers cited, it is 
quite foreign to Scripture as well as gratuitous 
in philosophical thinking. In the point of 
view of the biblical revelation the Father is 
absolutely ultimate. The Persons of the Trin- 
ity are not manifestations of something back 
of the three Persons. Rather the Son and 
the Spirit manifest the nature and purposes 
of the infinite Father. 

VIII 

A second error, attaching in no slight measure 
to mysticism as historically known, may be 
regarded as a corollary to the foregoing. God 
having been construed as the indefinite, the 



MYSTICISM 261 

inference was drawn that the soul, in order 
to reach him, must proceed by the via negativa, 
must be stripped of all characteristic features 
and functions, and so be assimilated to the 
undifferentiated divine essence. 

This point of view was expressed in the 
most emphatic terms by a number of writers. 
Thus the pseudo Dionysius remarks, "When 
we enter that darkness which is above under- 
standing, we pass not merely into brevity of 
speech, but even into absolute silence and the 
negation of thought." Eckhart declares of the 
subject of close approach to God: "He must 
come into a forgetting and not knowing. One 
cannot draw near to this Word better than by 
stillness and silence; then it is heard and 
understood in utter ignorance. When one 
knows nothing it is opened and revealed." 
Tauler teaches : "If man in reality is to become 
one with God, then all energies and powers 
even of the inner man must die and become 
silent. The will must turn away even from 
the good and from all willing and become 
void of willing." "In this higher state," 
observes Ruysbroeck, "the soul sinks into the 
vast darkness of the Godhead, into the abyss, 
in which the Persons of the Trinity transcend 
themselves." "There is no sense of anything 
in this state," says Teresa, "only fruition with- 



262 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

out understanding what that may be the 
fruition of which is granted." 

So run the descriptions of the consummating 
stage, of the highest flight of the soul in its 
ascent toward the goal. In judging them it 
may be admitted that one attempting, out of 
the resources of an imperfect recollection, to 
sketch the impressions received in trance-like 
experiences, might naturally be inclined to 
employ such terms as are cited above. But 
the estimate put upon this order of experi- 
ences invites a downright challenge. Man is 
not perfected by being, so to speak, depersonal- 
ized; not glorified by being plunged into an 
abyss of darkness and ignorance. It is an 
eclipse of both God and man which occurs 
when God is represented as the absolutely 
indefinite, and man in order to union with 
him is reduced to a corresponding indefiniteness 
and vacuity. 

IX 

Closely linked with the foregoing error, and 
coextensive with it as respects the field in 
which it has currency, was a habit of depicting 
union with God in essentially pantheistic 
terms. Whatever may have been the mean- 
ing put into the terms, there can be no denial 
that the terms employed were supremely 



MYSTICISM 263 

adapted to suggest a pantheistic dissipation of 
the distinctions between God and man. The 
following extracts will afford sufficient evi- 
dence. "The heavenly Father," asserts Eck- 
hart, "begetteth his only begotten Son in him- 
self and in me. Wherefore in himself and in 
me? I am one with him; and he has no power 
to shut me out." Referring to the spark, 
which he represents as central to man's per- 
sonality, he affirms, "This is in very deed God, 
in that it is a single oneness and bears within 
it the imagery of all creatures." He remarks 
further, "The eye through which I see God, 
that is the same eye with which God sees me." 
Following the example of Eckhart, Tauler 
speaks of God as begetting his Son in the 
soul "as truly as he begetteth him in eternity, 
neither more nor less." Again he says: "God 
touches the brimming vessel [of the soul] with 
his finger, and it overflows, and pours itself 
back again into the divine source from whence 
it has proceeded. It flows back into its source 
without channel and means and loses itself 
altogether; will, knowledge, love, perception are 
all swallowed up and lost in God, and become 
one with him." Suso, a contemporary of 
Tauler, uses this strong language: "Like a 
being which loses itself in an indescribable 
intoxication, the [human] spirit ceases to be 



264 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

itself, divests itself of itself, passes into God, 
and becomes entirely one with him as a drop 
of water is mingled with a cask of wine." 
Ruysbroeck puts the thought of union with 
God in this form: "All men who are exalted 
above their creatureliness into a contemplative 
life are one with the divine glory — yea, are 
that glory. And they see and feel and find in 
themselves by means of this divine light that 
they are the same simple Ground as to their 
uncreated nature." With Angelus Silesius we 
find the thesis on union with God expressed 
in these paradoxical terms: "I am as rich as 
God; there can be no grain of dust that I have 
not in common with him. ... I know that 
without me God can no moment live; if I 
come to naught, he must needs give up the 
ghost." 

It is only fair to add that, judged by their 
intention, these writers, for the most part, 
were not so thoroughly inclined to a panthe- 
istic abolition of the distinction between the 
divine and the human as their forms of ex- 
pression might suggest. Eckhart, Tauler, and 
Ruysbroeck took pains to indicate their belief 
in the persistence of the human subject as 
opposed to complete absorption in God. The 
fact remains, however, that their phraseology 
was seriously at fault, and that its ill-chosen 



MYSTICISM 265 

terms were more or less of an index of de- 
fective thinking. Whatever precedent for the 
phraseology may be found in certain imprudent 
statements of the Christian Fathers, it stands 
in glaring contradiction with the consciousness 
of creaturely dependence and limitation which 
must be an abiding constituent of normal 
piety. Naturally it furnished a congenial basis 
for such pantheistic aberrations as found har- 
borage in the later Middle Ages within the 
Sect of the Free Spirit and other similar parties. 
From Christian and non-Christian history alike 
we are obliged to infer that radical mysticism 
is exposed to temptation in the direction of 
pantheism. 

X 

Once more, we find occasion to charge 
against mysticism, as it stands before us in 
history, a rather conspicuous tendency to 
schematize religious experience overmuch; in 
other words, to prescribe a fixed succession of 
stages for reaching the goal of perfect union 
with God. This may not have resulted from 
the proper genius of mysticism so much as 
from carrying over a scholastic habit into the 
mystical province. Not all mystics by any 
means are chargeable with the fault in ques- 
tion, but a considerable proportion of them 
have exhibited it to a noticeable extent. Either 



266 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

giving too loose a rein to speculative require- 
ments, or inadvertently turning the experience 
of an individual into a general model, they 
have specified from three to six distinct stages 
as marking the ascending pathway to the 
summit of the contemplative life. A specimen 
of this intemperate elaboration is furnished by 
Richard of St. Victor. The first stage of con- 
templation, as he represents, is directed to 
nature, as a field from which one may derive 
a spontaneous impression of divine power, 
wisdom, and goodness. In the second, the 
mind passes beyond this spontaneous impres- 
sion, and inquires after the order, cause, and 
use of visible things. In the third, the simil- 
itude between the visible and the invisible is 
made an occasion of the thought being up- 
lifted to the latter. In the fourth stage the 
images of visible things are wholly transcended, 
and incorporeal entities, such as one's own 
soul or such as spirits and angels, are appre- 
hended. In the fifth stage there is a vision 
of the divine, which may be described as above 
reason, but not contrary to reason. In the 
sixth stage contemplation is apparently counter 
to reason (praeter rationem) as well as above 
reason. Here the soul is confronted with 
mysteries transcending all the powers of ra- 
tional insight. Such is the mystery of the 



MYSTICISM 267 

Holy Trinity. In the first four of these stages 
human industry has a part to perform along 
with divine agency. But in the last two all 
depends upon the grace of God. One may 
prepare himself for them by the exercises of 
self -discipline and piety; he attains to them 
only as he is transported by the might of that 
same Spirit which caught up Paul to the third 
heaven. In such an experience the mind is 
lost both to the world and itself in ecstasy. 

Bonaventura presents a scheme substantially 
identical with that of Richard. Teresa dis- 
tinguishes four degrees of prayer and of ex- 
altation in prayer. In the first the faculties 
are exercised in ordinary ways. In the second, 
the prayer of quiet, the divine factor, comes 
in so largely that the understanding is exercised 
only at intervals. In the third, the prayer 
of union, the soul is so engulfed in the divine 
as to be in a sense out of itself. In the fourth, 
the prayer of rapture, the soul is fully possessed 
by God, and filled with an unspeakable delight 
and impression of glory. Others of the mystics 
have constructed ladders of spiritual ascent 
equally elaborate, and have described them in 
ways implying that aspiring souls must pass 
over the specified rounds in order to gain the 
high summit of experience. 

This feature may be only a subordinate 



268 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

ground of criticism. Possibly the question may 
be raised whether it affords any basis of objec- 
tion, since it is no essential characteristic of 
mysticism, and has not been universally exem- 
plified. But it shows at least that mystics 
are not wholly proof against a temptation to 
formalism, simply because of their profound 
emphasis on the experiential element. It is 
possible to devise a sort of strait- jacket for 
experience itself by a too exact and elaborate 
formulation of its necessary stages. 

XI 

Finally, mysticism in its historical form is 
subject to criticism on the score of a certain 
tendency to exalt the value of absorption in 
divine contemplation, to a relative disparage- 
ment of the worth of practical activity. Ploti- 
nus gave expression to this tendency in his 
teaching, though happily his practice was on 
a better plane. He is reported to have said 
that, as the sensible world is the shadow of 
the intelligible world, so is action a shadow 
of contemplation suited to weak-minded per- 
sons. Christian mystics have not infrequently 
taken pains to repudiate this theoretical ex- 
treme. Indeed, some of the most radical of 
them, as appears in preceding citations, have 
most energetically asserted the worth and the 



MYSTICISM 269 

necessity of a right practical activity. It 
remains true nevertheless that many of them 
have painted, as the consummate ideal of 
religious experience, that stage of contem- 
plation in which the soul is so absorbed in 
God as to be lost to the world and even to 
itself. In short, they do not appear in this 
relation to be fully in harmony with them- 
selves. As the Buddhist doctrine of obligatory 
benevolence agrees ill with the other Buddhist 
doctrine that a state of absolute cessation 
from all desire is the ideal state, so the stress 
of the mystics upon practical activity is not 
well adjusted to their picture of a state of 
pure contemplation, of utter passivity, as the 
highest good, the incomparable realization of 
the human spirit. The suggestion is unavoid- 
able that they must have been in error on the 
one side or the other. And there is very scanty 
room to doubt that they overestimated the 
state of passivity, the state ensuing from a 
submergence of the concrete individual life in 
the abyss of Deity. The truer ideal is pre- 
sented us in the Christ who walked the earth 
fully conscious of its affairs; but walked it at 
the same time as a citizen of heaven, illumi- 
nated at every step by the light of the Father's 
face, and finding his meat and drink in doing 
the Father's will. 



270 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

XII 

At this point it is incumbent upon us to 
emphasize a thought which has already been 
expressed, namely, that the undesirable results 
which can be pointed out indicate not so much 
the necessary outcome of mysticism as the 
exposures to which it is subject. It fulfills a 
great religious function in magnifying the in- 
comparable riches which lie in the divine 
sphere, and which are made the property of 
the human soul rather by divine gift, in answer 
to genuine or voluntary receptivity, than 
through mere human striving. As stressing 
this momentous truth it has a valuable mission 
to fulfill in every age. The one demand is 
that it should be safeguarded against the ex- 
tremes to which it is exposed. In equivalent 
terms we might say, the one demand is that 
it should conform to the New Testament type. 
There we have most intimate unity depicted 
without any compromise of distinct personality. 
There, too, intense devotement of self to God 
is reconciled with the payment of the full 
debt to social interests. The peculiarity, the 
unique excellence, of the mediation of Christ 
is that it unites at once to God and to man. 
As the Son of God, whose whole being is 
penetrated with a filial consciousness, Christ 



MYSTICISM 271 

brings the responsive believer into most inti- 
mate communion with the Father. At the 
same time, as the Son of man, the Elder Brother 
of the race, he constitutes the ideal center of 
human brotherhood, and serves to bind the 
believer closely to his fellows. Let the mystic, 
then, retain his lofty conception of possible 
enrichment in and through communion with 
God; but let him also keep close to the Christ 
of the New Testament. 



ESSAY IX 

BAHAISM HISTORICALLY AND 
CRITICALLY CONSIDERED 



ESSAY IX 

BAHAISM HISTORICALLY AND 
CRITICALLY CONSIDERED 

I. Antecedents 

Bahaism, or the religious system emanating 
from Baha Ullah, had its immediate ante- 
cedent in Babism, of which, indeed, it may 
be characterized as a modified edition designed 
by its author to supersede the original. The 
rise of Babism was due above all else to the 
doctrine of the Imamate as held by the Shiites, 
an important sectarian division of Moham- 
medanism, and the one which gained a pre- 
dominant position in Persia. Along with this 
main cause may be associated certain auxiliary 
influences which colored and leavened Persian 
Mohammedanism. 

The Shiites differed from the main body of 
Mohammedans, or the Sunnites, in a twofold 
respect on the subject of headship. In the 
first place they contended that the headship 
over the faithful ought to have passed directly 
from Mohammed to his son-in-law Ali, and to 
have been continued in the line of his descend- 
ants. Accordingly, they regarded the first three 

275 



276 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

caliphs, Abu Bakr, Omar, and Othman, as 
usurpers who delayed the coming of Ali into 
his proper inheritance. In like manner they 
esteemed the Ommeyades, who established their 
line at Damascus (661-750), and the Abbasides, 
who ruled at Bagdad (750-1258), as nefarious 
intruders, who not only kept out the descend- 
ants of Ali from the rulership, but slew them 
one after another, employing in most instances 
the secret hand of the poisoner. Thus the 
Shiites bewailed the sad fate of the legitimate 
succession which began with Ali and ran to 
the twelfth in the list of proper heirs. This 
twelfth, known as the Imam Mahdi, they re- 
garded not as dying, but as mysteriously 
disappearing (A. D. 940), and as being able 
still, through specially qualified representatives, 
called Babs (that is, Gates), to guide the faith- 
ful. Of these temporary guides four appeared 
in succession, and then followed a long period 
of occultation. The office, however, of the 
Imam, as the legitimate successor of the 
Arabian Prophet was called in Shiite ranks, 
continued to be assigned enormous importance. 
In the second place the Shiites differed from 
the Sunnites in their conception of the dis- 
tinctive characteristics of the office of head- 
ship. Not only did the former entertain special 
views on the question of the rightful incumbents, 



BAHAISM 277 

but they also stood in contrast with the Sun- 
nites in their conception of the basis on which 
the office could be held and of the necessary 
endowments of the legitimate occupant. "Ac- 
cording to the belief of the latter," to quote 
Professor E. G. Browne, "the vicegerency of 
the Prophet is a matter to be determined by 
the choice and election of his followers, and 
the visible head of the Mussulman world is 
qualified for the lofty position which he holds 
less by any special divine grace than by a 
combination of orthodoxy and administrative 
capacity. According to the Imamite [or Shiite] 
view, on the other hand, the vicegerency was 
a matter altogether spiritual; an office con- 
ferred by God alone, first by his Prophet, and 
afterward by those who so succeeded him, and 
having nothing to do with the popular choice 
or approval. In a word the Caliph of the 
Sunnis is merely the outward and visible De- 
fender of the Faith: the Imam of the Shiites 
is the divinely ordained successor of the Prophet, 
one endowed with all perfections and spiritual 
gifts, one whom all the faithful must obey, 
whose decision is absolute and final, whose 
wisdom is superhuman, and whose words are 
authoritative." 1 

The Shiite doctrine of the importance of 

X A Traveller's Narrative, Note O, pp. 296-298. 



278 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

the Imam and of the possibility of practical 
connection with him through a special medium 
was well adapted to produce a tense expecta- 
tion in so impressionable a people as the 
Persians. In the early part of the nineteenth 
century a fresh impulse was given to expecta- 
tion by the so-called Sheikhi school founded by 
Sheikh Ahmad. This school awarded special 
emphasis to the need of communication with 
the absent Imam, and the leader who followed 
Ahmad, namely Haji Kazim, formally sanc- 
tioned the hope that the chosen agent for 
such communication was about to be dis- 
closed. 

Out of this ferment of Shiite theory, longing, 
and expectation Babism was generated. In 
1844 a young man, twenty-four years of age, 
a disciple of Haji Kazim, who bore the name of 
Mirza Ali Mohammed, announced himself as 
the Bab, and began to speak with authority 
as the representative of the Imam Mahdi. 
The conditions under which he appeared clearly 
emphasize the fact that Babism was an offshoot 
of the Shiite doctrine of the Imamate. As 
Bahaism derived its effective impulse and 
much of its content from Babism, its historical 
genesis must in large part be referred to the 
same source. 

A secondary and less specific source may be 



BAHAISM 279 

described as the visionary and mystical type 
of piety which for a long period had been 
very much at home in Persia. A prominent 
phase of this type of religion is known as 
Sufism, which departed widely from the Koranic 
doctrine of a sovereign God somewhat externally 
related to the world, advocated ofttimes a 
strong view of divine immanence, ran at the 
extreme squarely into pantheism, and in some 
instances gave currency to such views on 
intermediaries between God and the world as 
are found in Neo-Platonism and Gnosticism. 
On the question of the actual historical con- 
nection between Sufism and Bahaism some 
diversity of opinion has obtained. The pro- 
nounced subjectivity or leaning to individual- 
ism, distinctive of Sufism, was undoubtedly 
contrasted with the authoritative regulation of 
religion, both in the matter of teaching and 
practice, which came to be asserted for Baha 
Ullah, and ultimately a polemical attitude was 
taken by the latter toward the former. But 
this does not preclude the supposition that 
the later movement derived a certain impulse 
and leaven from the earlier. Professor Browne 
notices that to some Sufis and mystics Babism 
at its rise commended itself as a kind of organ- 
ized Sufism. 2 He reports also that he met a 

2 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, July, 1889. 



280 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

few Babis who held the Sufi doctrine of the 
oneness of the highest portion of the human 
soul with the divine essence. 3 Furthermore he 
refers to various sentences of the Babi or Bahai 
literature as containing echoes of the sayings 
of noted Sufi writers. 4 Roemer expresses the 
judgment that what appears in the earlier 
writings of Baha Ullah — belonging to the 
period antecedent to the publication of his 
own special claims — was substantially Sufism, 
though joined with a higher regard for the 
historical in religion than was generally charac- 
teristic of Sufi mysticism. 5 Without pronounc- 
ing on the legitimacy of this opinion, we may 
safely conclude that Sufi teaching made an 
appreciable contribution to Babism and through 
that to Bahaism. 

II. Historical Sketch 
The attractive personality and intense ear- 
nestness of Mirza Ali Mohammed conspired 
with the special conditions furnished by Per- 
sian Mohammedanism to secure a ready hear- 
ing for his message. Many thousands accepted 
him as the Bab, the Gate of effective communi- 
cation with the unseen Imam Mahdi. As the 



3 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, October, 1889. 
4 Browne's Introduction to Life and Teaching of Abbas 
Effendi by Myron Phelps, pp. xvi, xvii. 
6 Die Babi-Behai, p. 81. 



BAHAISM 281 

tide of success advanced he was emboldened to 
enlarge his claims. Before the close of his 
brief career he let it be known that he was 
himself to be regarded as the Mahdi, and gave 
himself the significant title of the Point, indi- 
cating thereby the fact that he was to be 
accounted a center of revelation. Expression 
was given to his religious scheme in a number 
of writings, the most important of which was 
the Bay an. 

It was a well-approved maxim among the 
Shiites that both the spiritual and the temporal 
rule would belong to the Imam when he should 
appear. There is little ground for surprise, 
therefore, in the fact that when the followers 
of the Bab became a considerable force, and 
were subjected to persecution by the Persian 
authorities, they resorted to armed resistance. 
For a brief space they seemed well able to 
hold their own; but at length they were worsted 
largely by the treachery of their foes. The 
Bab, who had stood aloof from the armed 
conflict, and who, indeed, at the time was a 
prisoner, was executed in 1850. Two years 
later an attempt by a few of the Babis to 
assassinate the Shah led to a fresh outbreak 
of persecution. From that time the Babi 
movement entered upon a stage of quiet and 
relatively secret propagandism in Persia. 



282 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

One feature in the teaching of the Bab laid 
a foundation for an additional movement 
which tended to overcloud the importance of 
his own mission. In numerous instances he 
referred to a bearer of divine revelation who 
should come after him, styling him the one 
whom God shall manifest, and ascribing to him 
singular authority. It is not on record that 
he predicted the speedy advent of this per- 
sonage. Evidence to the contrary lies in the 
extent to which he fashioned a system of rules 
for his followers and in his appointment of a 
successor. This successor was a young man 
by the name of Mirza Yahya, who is commonly 
mentioned by his title Subh-i-Azal (the Dawn 
of the Eternal). After the deadly onslaught 
on his party in 1852 he withdrew from Persia 
and took refuge in Bagdad. The same city 
became a gathering place for other exiled 
Babis, including an older half-brother, Mirza 
Husain Ali, known in his later career as Baha 
Ullah (the Glory of God). 

That Subh-i-Azal was accepted by the whole 
body of his coreligionists as the legitimate 
successor of the Bab is a well-grounded his- 
torical conclusion. In the narrative of Hazi 
Mirza Jani, who was among the martyrs of 
1852, the appointment of Subh-i-Azal by 
testamentary deposition of the Bab is ex- 



BAHAISM 283 

pressly asserted. 6 As this assertion was made 
before any rival was in the field, there is no 
reason to doubt its truthfulness. Moreover, it 
is confirmed by the testimony of Bahais in 
Persia with whom Professor Browne conferred, 
and who assured him that Subh-i-Azal was 
commonly recognized as the Bab's successor up 
to the time of the departure of the exiles 
from Bagdad. 7 This seems to have occurred 
in 1863, when the Turkish government trans- 
ported the refugees to Constantinople, and 
thence after a brief interval to Adrianople. 
A year or two before the transference from 
Bagdad the Ikan was written by Baha Ullah, 
and in this writing the significant fact is to be 
noted that there is an implicit acknowledgment 
of the headship of Subh-i-Azal. 8 

Already in the Bagdad period the intima- 
tion thrown out by the Bab respecting the 
great mission of the one whom God shall mani- 
fest began to work as a leaven among the 
enthusiasts who had gathered to his standard. 
Mirza Asadullah claimed to be this predicted 
leader, and several others put forth a like 
claim. 9 Meanwhile an ambition to figure as 

"Browne, The New History, pp. 374, 381. 
7 A Year Amongst the Persians, p. 322. 
8 Browne, Article Bab, Babis in Encyclopaedia of Religion 
and Ethics. 

9 A Traveller's Narrative, p. 358. 



284 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

this crowning manifestation of God on earth 
began to work in the mind of one who was 
far more competent to gain credence for his 
claims. This was Baha Ullah, the half-brother 
of Subh-i-Azal and his senior by thirteen years. 
The daughter of the former reports that he 
made known to his eldest son, on the eve of 
his departure from Bagdad, the conviction that 
he was the one whom God shall manifest. 10 
Such may have been the fact; but the evidence 
points clearly to the conclusion that the first 
open declaration of his high mission by Baha 
Ullah was made at Adrianople about 1867. 
This declaration caused a rupture in the ranks 
of the Babis which has never been healed. 
Subh-i-Azal resented it as an unwarrantable 
intrusion into the headship. He argued that 
" 'he whom God shall manifest' cannot be ex- 
pected until the religion founded by the Bab, 
with its attendant laws and institutions, had 
obtained currency among some of the nations 
of the earth." 11 A sharp controversy resulted. 
In 1868 the Turkish government took cogni- 
zance of the dissension, and banished Subh-i- 
Azal to Famagusta in Cyprus and Baha Ullah 



10 Phelps, Life and Teachings of Abbas Effendi, pp. 30ff. 

"Professor E. D. Ross, Bahaism (in Great Religions of 
the World, pp. 208, 209). Compare Gobineau, Les Religions 
et les Philosophies dans l'Asie Centrale, p. 333. 



BAHAISM 285 

with his partisans to Acre in Syria. After two 
years of somewhat rigorous imprisonment at 
Acre Baha Ullah was permitted to dwell in a 
comfortable house, and nine years later he 
was given the liberty of the city and the neigh- 
boring country. Stories of his life-long martyr- 
dom as a prisoner have but a scanty basis 
in fact. 

In the schism which resulted from the clash 
between Subh-i-Azal and Baha Ullah by far 
the larger proportion of Babis came soon to 
adhere to the more radical claimant, and so 
merited to bear henceforth the name of Bahais. 
This result may be attributed in part to the 
very extent of the claims of Baha Ullah, in 
part to the fact that he was a man of bolder 
temper and larger ability than Subh-i-Azal, 
and in part to the new aspect which he gave 
to his religion, in that he loosened its connec- 
tion with Shiite Mohammedanism, disengaged 
it for the time being from political connections, 
and sought to endow it with an appearance of 
universality. 

The speedy success of Bahaism was dis- 
counted in some measure by events which it 
is difficult to place under any other category 
than that of moral disasters. In the first 
place a series of assassinations occurred by 
which adherents of Subh-i-Azal were cut off. 



286 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

It is not positively in evidence that the Bahais 
who committed these crimes acted under 
orders, but that they were capable of planning 
and committing such deeds makes no favorable 
comment on the bearing of their master toward 
opponents; nor is the case helped by the 
contention of those Bahais who have argued 
that a prophet has as good a right to remove 
one who is injurious to religion as a surgeon 
has to amputate a gangrened limb. 12 In the 
second place the extent to which falsification 
of history took place in the interest of Bahai 
propagandism must be rated, in the compre- 
hensive view, as a moral disaster. Two writings 
in particular come into account in this connec- 
tion. The earlier of these, The New History, 
was designed to supersede the work of Mirza 
Jani which was mentioned above. In it all 
that portion of the history which was favor- 
able to the claims of Subh-i-Azal as successor 
and vicegerent of the Bab, and adverse to the 

12 Browne, The New History, p. xxiii; A Traveller's Nar- 
rative, p. 358ff.; A Year Amongst the Persians, p. 406; Wilson, 
Bahaism and its Claims, pp. 221ff. How boldly a zealous 
propagandist in the American field can defend this damaging 
episode may be seen in these words of I. G. Kheiralla: "Baha 
Ullah acknowledged that his followers assassinated the 
Azalists, and every true Bahai should do the same. On my 
part it gives me great delight to acknowledge it, and greater 
satisfaction that it happened" (O Christians! Why Do You 
Believe Not on Christ? 1917, pp. 61, 62). 



BAHAISM 287 

supereminence of Baha Ullah, was suppressed. 13 
The other writing, entitled A Traveller's Narra- 
tive, savors of still more radical perversion. 
Ignoring the higher titles which the Bab 
applied to himself, it consigned him to the 
role of a mere herald or forerunner of Baha 
Ullah. In place of admitting a genuine appoint- 
ment by the Bab of Subh-i-Azal to be his 
successor, it foists upon the narrative the 
fiction that the ostensible appointment was a 
mere blind to shield Baha from hostile attack, 
it being definitely understood by the Bab 
himself that he was to be his real successor. 14 
Had the history been as here alleged, we 
should have a sham appointment, fitted to 
deceive and actually deceiving substantially the 
whole body of the faithful — a performance of 
a highly equivocal character. But there are 
ample reasons for regarding the alleged his- 
tory as an apologetic invention, and the respon- 
sibility for the circulation of the falsehood 
reaches to the foremost leaders of the Bahai 
cult. It is understood to have been written 
by Abbas Effendi, the oldest son of Baha Ullah, 
and more than any other his official successor. 15 



13 See Professor Browne's translation with added notes, 
especially Appendix II. 14 Pp. 62, 63. 

"Browne, The New History, p. xxxi; Journal of the Royal 
Asiatic Society, 1892, pp. 306, 665. 



288 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

That the father gave it countenance cannot 
well be doubted, for there is reason to believe 
that the Traveller's Narrative was written in 
1886, or a considerable interval before the 
death of Baha Ullah, that having occurred in 
1892. The Traveller's Narrative was con- 
cocted for the purpose of mightily fortifying 
the claims of Bahaism. In reality it weakens 
them by all the force of a moral disaster. 

The accession to the headship of the Bahais 
by Abbas Effendi, or, to use his titular designa- 
tion, Abdul Baha (Servant of Baha), was not 
undisputed. His three brothers, or, rather, 
half-brothers, Mohammed Ali, Ziah Ullah, and 
Badi Ullah, especially the first named, ques- 
tioned his title, and charged him with falsify- 
ing documents in the interest of his unwarrant- 
able claims. The opposition was not without 
its effect. A memorial of it appeared even in 
this country, where as prominent a prop- 
agandist as I. G. Kheiralla concluded to take 
sides with Mohammed Ali. 16 For the most 
part, however, allegiance was given to Abdul 
Baha, who diligently employed his diplomatic 
talent to extend Bahaism into western lands. 



16 Kheiralla's estimate of the more commonly accepted 
claimant is given succinctly in this form: "Abbas Effendi is 
the abomination that maketh desolate which is mentioned 
in Daniel." 



BAHAISM 289 

In 1911-12 he visited France, England, and the 
United States, his stay in this country reaching 
from April 12 to December 5, 1912. 

As respects the spread of the Bahai cult its 
partisans have sometimes indulged in very 
exaggerated statements. More than one writer 
has spoken of millions of adherents. 17 It has 
even been claimed that half the population 
of Persia belongs to the new religion. Doubt- 
less in that country the Bahais amount to 
an appreciable factor. Just how large this 
should be regarded is made somewhat con- 
jectural by the relative secrecy which is main- 
tained by the members of the sect. In ac- 
cordance with a very broad scheme of accom- 
modation they are permitted to practice full 
outward conformity to the current Moham- 
medanism. Under such conditions no trust- 
worthy enumeration is possible. We are left 
to the judgment of those who have had the 
benefit of long residence in the country. To 
this class belongs Samuel Graham Wilson, who 
had been a resident for thirty-two years at 
the time of writing, and had made a very 
thorough study of Bahaism. He says: "Some 
judicious non-Bahai writers allow the Bahais 



17 Kheiralla in the closing years of the nineteenth century 
reckoned their number at fifty-five millions (Browne, Ma- 
terials for the Study of the Babi Religion, p. 143). 



290 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

half a million or less in Persia on a basis of 
ten millions of population. American mis- 
sionaries, as Jordan at Teheran, Frame at 
Resht, and Shedd at Urumia, calculate that 
the number in Persia does not exceed one 
hundred thousand to two hundred thousand. 
After careful inquiry I agree with this esti- 
mate." 18 The same writer draws the conclusion 
that "Bahais outside of Persia are probably 
all told not more than fifteen thousand, and 
one third of these are Persians in Russia." 
As respects this country, he notes that there 
are Bahai congregations in sixteen States, and 
that "the census of 1906 reported twelve 
hundred and eighty Bahais, which may have 
increased to two or three thousand." 

III. A Glance at Bahai Doctrines 

1. The conception of God. The Bahai ex- 
position of this theme is not characterized 
either by profundity, clarity, or full self- 
consistency. On the one hand sentences 
occur which magnify the transcendence of 
God, and convey the impression that he is 
above all human understanding, and even 
above all contact with finite beings. On the 
other hand it is asserted that God is capable 

18 Bahaism and its Claims, 1915, p. 26, Fleming H. Revell 
Company, New York. 



BAHAISM 291 

of manifestation, and that authentic mani- 
festations of him have been vouchsafed. Both 
orders of statements occur in close conjunction 
in the Ikan of Baha Ullah. "The Unseen 
Divinity and Essence of Oneness," it is there 
declared, "is beyond ascent and descent, 
ingress and egress; is exalted above the praise 
of every praiser and the comprehension of 
every comprehender. . . . No relation, connec- 
tion, separation, union, nearness, remoteness, 
position or reference is possible between him 
and contingent things. . . . Therefore all the 
prophets, divines, sages, and wise men con- 
fess their lack of attainment to the knowledge 
of that Essence of Essences and admit their 
inability to know and reach that Truth of 
Truths." In the sentences which follow, on 
the other hand, it is assumed that there are 
elect persons — "Mirrors or Essences of Sanc- 
tity" — whose office it is to "express that 
eternal essence and Preexistent Entity. These 
Mirrors of Sanctity and Dawning-places of 
Divinity fully express the Sun of Existence 
and Essence of Desire. For instance, their 
knowledge expresses his knowledge, their power 
his power, their dominion his dominion, their 
beauty his beauty, and their manifestation his 
manifestation. . . . Therefore it is said: 'There 
is no difference between thee and them, except 



292 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

that they are thy servants and thy creatures.' 
This is the station of T am he and he is me' 
recorded in the tradition. . . . These Holy Tem- 
ples are the eternal Primal mirrors which ex- 
press the Invisible of the Invisibles and all 
his names and attributes, such as Knowledge, 
Power, Dominion, Grandeur, Mercy, Wisdom, 
Glory, Generosity, and Beneficence." 19 

Statements equally emphatic on the exalta- 
tion of the divine essence are found in the 
words of Abdul Baha in conjunction with 
antithetic declarations that the "Manifesta- 
tions," or select Prophets, truly manifest God. 
"The knowledge," he says, "of the reality of 
the Divinity is impossible and unattainable, 
but the knowledge of the Manifestations of 
God is the knowledge of God, for the boun- 
ties, splendors, and divine attributes are 
apparent in them. Therefore if man at- 
tains to the knowledge of the Manifestations 
of God he will attain to the knowledge of 
God." 20 

A justification of this pronounced antithesis 
between an unknowable reality or essence and 
knowable manifestations is not discoverable. 
It looks as though Baha Ulla and Abdul Baha 



19 The Ikan (or Ighan), Translated by AH Kuli Khan, 
pp. 69-73. 

20 Barney, Some Answered Questions, pp. 257, 258. 



BAHAISM 293 

were victims of traditional forms of statement 
and had not duly considered their conflicting 
implications. A reality or essence that can be 
truly manifested is certainly capable of being 
known, at least partially. One may allege, 
indeed, as does Abdul Baha, that the Divine 
Reality is unknown with regard to its essence, 
and is known with regard to its attributes; 21 
but this is an artificial representation. Attri- 
butes define the essence or name the modes of 
existence without which it cannot be thought 
to exist. 

A second antithesis, though not quite so 
distinct as the foregoing, may be noticed in 
the Bahai conception of God. Over against 
the theistic point of view there are traces of 
pantheistic thinking, and it is not altogether 
clear to which side the preference inclines. 
Abdul Baha criticizes the pantheism of the 
Sufis as not doing justice to the divine tran- 
scendence. 22 Yet it is noticeable that so 
friendly an interpreter as Myron Phelps im- 
putes to him a form of belief savoring dis- 
tinctly of pantheism. "The Bahai conception 
of the Supreme Being," he says, "is not a 
personality, but an essence, an all-pervading 
Force or Power, frequently referred to as 

21 Some Answered Questions, pp. 255, 256. 
^Ibid., pp. 326-334. 



294 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

Love, or Truth, or Life. . . . The universe 
exists for the purpose of individualizing the 
Infinite, Absolute and Eternal Essence." 23 
Baha Ullah in one or another connection, as 
for instance, in his epistle to the Shah, speaks 
of God as transcendent personal Deity. But, 
on the other hand, he has penned sentences 
which easily can be understood as containing 
a pantheistic leaven. One of the statements 
cited above from the Ikan is not unnaturally 
taken in this sense, namely, the reference to 
the "Mirrors of Sanctity," as being so inti- 
mately united with God as to make it per- 
missible for any one of them to apply to him- 
self the proposition, "I am he and he is me." 
Another sentence that lends itself to a like 
interpretation is this: "God alone is the one 
Power which animates and dominates all 
things, which are but manifestations of his 
energy." 24 The inference seems warrantable, 
therefore, that commentators who have de- 
tected a pantheistic strain in Bahaism, have 
not been destitute of ostensible grounds for 
their criticism. It is noticeable that a con- 
spicuous representative in this country, while 
defining God as "infinite Personality," has been 

^Life and Teachings of Abbas Effendi, pp. 114, 115. 
24 Words of Wisdom, p. 61, cited by Wilson, Bahaism and 
its Claims, pp. 88, 89. 



BAHAISM 295 

willing to charge Abdul Baha with pantheistic 
teaching. 25 

We judge that we shall not be far out of 
the way if we liken the pantheistic element in 
Bahaism to that of Neo-Platonism and Gnos- 
ticism. Like these systems, it combines with a 
formal stress on the transcendence of God a 
recognition of intermediaries between God and 
the world which have essentially the character 
of effluxes or emanations from the Godhead. 
Bahaism may not be much inclined to apply 
the name of emanations to its higher prophets, 
the so-called Manifestations; but often it 
attaches quite as much of that character to 
them as pertains to the Gnostic Aeons. This 
point will receive illustration under the next 
topic. 

2. Method and stages of revelation. Babism 
and Bahaism alike maintain that in the field 
of religion authentic and adequate revelation 
takes place only through the instrumentality 
of Prophets or "Manifestations." They are set 
for the guidance of the race, and there is no 
substitute for their message. 

Much emphasis is placed upon the inter- 
connection of the Manifestations and their 
essential agreement in teaching. Not infre- 
quently their unity is pushed to the extent 

^Kheiralla, cited by Wilson, p. 89. 



296 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

of affirming in some sense their identity. Thus 
Jani, in the earliest extant history of Babism, 
speaks of them as identical in essence, just as 
the sun which shines to-day is the same as 
that which shone yesterday or that which will 
shine to-morrow. 26 A similar representation is 
employed by Abdul Baha. All the prophets, 
he affirms, are united in their message. Their 
variations are only comparable to those of the 
sun which in different seasons ascends from 
different rising points on the horizon. 27 "Each 
time God sends a Great One to us we are 
given new life, but the truth each Manifesta- 
tion brings is the same. . . . The real teaching 
of Buddha is the same as the teaching of 
Jesus Christ. The teaching of all the Prophets 
is the same in character." 28 From this point 
of view the obligation of men universally to 
accept each Manifestation is asserted. "As 
Christians believe in Moses, so should the Jews 
believe in Jesus. As the Mohammedans be- 
lieve in Christ and in Moses, so likewise the 
Jews and the Christians should believe in 
Mohammed." 29 To ease the task of believing 
in things apparently contradictory resort is 
sometimes made to the idea that the later 



26 Browne, The New History, p. 331. 

27 Abdul Baha in London, p. 16. 

28 Ibid., pp. 50, 57. ^Ibid., p. 33. 



BAHAISM 297 

oracles of a religion represent corruptions of 
the earlier. Thus Kheiralla invents an oppor- 
tunity to idealize the teaching of Mohammed 
by bringing in the assumption that after the 
death of the Prophet a false Koran was sub- 
stituted for the true. 30 

In their visible earthly career the Mani- 
festations are subject to the vicissitudes of 
the temporal sphere. But intrinsically, in 
consequence of their extraordinary nature and 
endowments, they are closely associated with 
eternity. In the passage cited above from 
the Ikan of Baha Ullah they are called "Eternal 
and Primal Mirrors which express the In- 
visible of the Invisibles." A transcendence of 
the temporal sphere is also assigned to them 
in these words of Abdul Baha: "Their heav- 
enly condition embraces all things, knows all 
mysteries, discovers all signs, and rules over 
all things; before as well as after their mission 
it is the same. That is why Christ has said: 
'I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the 
last': that is to say, there never has been and 
never shall be any change and alteration in 
me." 31 This amounts to affirming that the 
lofty endowments of the Manifestations are 
theirs by virtue of their original nature and 

^Baha Ullah. p. 164. 

31 Some Answered Questions, p. 254. 



298 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

position, and not something loaned to them 
in time. At least this is true of the first rank 
of Manifestations, in which Abdul Baha in- 
cludes Abraham, Moses, Christ, Mohammed, 
the Bab, and Baha Ullah. 32 As for the second- 
ary or dependent Manifestations, like Solomon, 
David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, while 
their endowments suffice for infallible teaching, 
they are more of the nature of a charism or 
special bestowment. In some connections the 
endowment of the major Manifestations is 
described under the name of the "Primal 
Will." This transcendent entity, which seems 
to be viewed as a kind of projection or emana- 
tion from God, is regarded as expressed or 
embodied equally in the several Manifestations 
of the first rank. 33 A certain vagueness attaches 
to the exposition of the subject, and one 
hesitates to name an exact historical parallel; 
but, as has been intimated, there are features 
which remind one of the intermediaries be- 
tween God and the world postulated by Gnos- 
ticism. Also analogies to Philonian and Neo- 
Platonic representations are discoverable. 

The authority of a Prophet or Manifestation 
is naturally made correspondent with his 
supereminence in rank and endowment. Rep- 

32 Some Answered Questions, p. 189. 
33 Sell, Essays on Islam, pp. 82-85. 



BAHAISM 299 

resentatives of Bahaism whom Professor Browne 
met in Persia, while admitting that one needs 
to be convinced that the claims of a person 
who functions as a prophet are well-founded, 
asserted that when once assent has been 
yielded there is no longer any prerogative of 
criticism or dissent. The believer must accept 
and follow implicitly whatever teaching may 
be imposed, even though it radically disagrees 
with things previously held. 34 At the beginning 
of the Kitab-i-Akdas, Baha Ullah greatly 
emphasizes the need of recognizing the organ 
of divine manifestation. "Whoever," it is 
said, "attaineth unto this hath attained unto 
all good, and whoever is debarred therefrom 
is of the people of error, even though he pro- 
duce all [manner of good] deeds." 35 The will 
of a Manifestation, says Abdul Baha, should 
be taken by believers as the law of God. "They 
are not to deviate as much as a hair's breadth 
from it." 36 He declares, furthermore, that in 
the absence of access to the invisible Essence, 
the Manifestation must be treated as a fore- 
most object of faith and even of worship. 
"In this world all men must turn their faces 



M A Year Amongst the Persians, pp. 302, 303. 
36 Browne, Article Bab, Babis in Encyclopaedia of Religion 
and Ethics. 

36 Barney, Some Answered Questions, pp. 200, 201. 



300 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

toward Him-whom-God-shall-Manifest. He is 
the dawning place of Divinity and the Mani- 
festation of Deity. He is the ultimate goal, 
the Adored One of all and the Worshipped 
One of all." 37 "The Manifestations of God," 
writes C. M. Remey, "have been the unique 
centers from which the world has received 
all knowledge of God, and outside of these 
divine channels no divine enlightenment has 
ever come to humanity." 38 

Though the authority of any Manifestation 
belonging to the first rank is equal to that 
of any other in the sense of imposing an un- 
limited obligation upon the contemporary gen- 
eration and upon the generations following up 
to the age of the next Manifestation, it is not 
to be overlooked that the later organ of rev- 
elation is admitted to have a certain advantage 
over an earlier. As being confronted by more 
advanced conditions he can give a broader 
scope and a higher reach to his message. This 
point of view was applied by the Bab in the 
claim that his oracles had a preeminence over 
the Koran like the preeminence of the Koran 
over the Gospels or of Mohammed over Christ. 39 
After a very brief interval it was applied by 

37 Star of the West, Feb. 7, 1914, p. 304. 
88 Ibid., September 8, 1913, p. 171. 
"Nicolas, Le Beyan Arabe, pp. 126, 127. 



\ 



BAHAISM 301 

Baha Ullah and his associates, to the effect of 
practically setting aside the Babi dispensation. 
Their own higher revelation, it was assumed, 
made it appropriate to treat the foregoing as 
virtually obsolete. Indeed, Baha Ullah in his 
comment on the Koranic phrase, "when the 
heaven shall be cloven asunder," seems to 
have formally justified the notion that the 
later dispensation annuls the preceding. "By 
this is meant," he says, "the heaven of religions 
elevated during every dispensation and cloven 
asunder in every subsequent Manifestation, 
that is, abolished and annulled." 40 Abdul Baha 
recognized the same point of view, maintain- 
ing that the last in the list of divine messengers, 
as speaking to men better able to understand 
the truth, is able to impart a fuller revelation. 41 
Making specific reference to the relation be- 
tween Christ and Baha Ullah, he declared that 
the latter gave in full flower what the former 
had given only in the bud. 42 Representatives 
of the Bahai cult in the United States have 
not been less open and emphatic in the ex- 
pression of their opinion that Christ has been 
superseded. "The Revelation of Jesus," says 



*°The Ikan, p. 32. 

41 Phelps, The Life and Teachings of Abbas Effendi, pp. 
126, 127. 

42 Abdul Baha in London, pp. 93, 94. 



302 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

Remey, "is no longer the Point of Guidance 
to the world, as it was in the past. . . . We 
must all understand that with the coming of 
the New Covenant all teachings of the past 
are past, and that in this new day of God only 
that which is revealed by the Supreme Pen, 
Baha Ullah, and that which issues from the 
center of the Covenant, Abdul Baha, is spiritual 
food for the people and is to be taught." 43 

In connection with such statements the ques- 
tion naturally arises as to what guarantee is 
provided that the Bahai revelation will hold 
good any longer than its predecessors — any 
longer, for instance, than the revelation of the 
Bab. It was after Baha Ullah had declared 
himself that Mary Baker G. Eddy and Madame 
Blavatsky came onto the stage with their 
respective oracles, not to mention the founder 
of Theomonism and others. Why may not a 
devotee of Christian Science or Theosophy be 
permitted to affirm the obligation of all ante- 
cedent systems to retire in favor of the later- 
appearing system? This uncomfortable liability 
of being superseded in short order was not 
overlooked by Baha Ullah, and he prudently 
sought to raise against it an effectual barrier. 
In the Kitab-i-Akdas he wrote, "Whoever lays 
claim to a matter (that is, a mission) ere one 

43 Star of the West, December 31, 1913, pp. 269, 271. 



BAHAISM 303 

thousand full years have passed, verily he is a 
lying impostor." 44 This is as strong a verbal 
fence as could well be made; but verbal fences 
are likely to give way before the mighty pressure 
of enkindled ambitions. Indeed, there have 
not been wanting those who have been ready 
to infer that the high assumptions of Abdul 
Baha involved a real breach in the fence which 
Baha Ullah attempted to set up in the quoted 
sentence. 

A curious feature in the dealing with the 
theme of the Manifestations is the prodigal 
manner in which Bahai writers have employed 
biblical pictures and forecasts as credentials 
of their own prophets from Mohammed to 
Baha Ullah. As their references indicate, they 
have borrowed in this procedure from the 
Millerites and other radical Adventists of the 
preceding century. Resorting to the arbitrary 
assumption of their Christian tutors, they 
have taken "days" in prophetical discourse to 
means "years," and thus have extracted from 
the book of Daniel and the Apocalypse num- 
bers which reach down into the modern era. 
Their jugglery in exegesis, however, differs 
from the procedure of their predecessors, since 
they apply the numbers rather to events in 

44 Pp. 13, 14, lithographed edition cited by Ross, Babism 
(in Great Religions of the World), p. 212. 



304 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

the Mohammedan domain than to the field 
of Jewish or Christian history. As prominent 
an authority as Abdul Baha has thought it 
worth while to attempt to support the Bahai 
cause with these artificial proofs. For example, 
making the three and one half times of Daniel 
xii. 7 to denote twelve hundred and sixty years, 
he says: "The Bab, the precursor of Baha 
Ullah, appeared in the year 1260 from the 
Hejira of Mohammed, by the reckoning of 
Islam.'* Again foisting years into the place 
of days in connection with Daniel xii, 11, he 
remarks: "The year 1290 from the proclama- 
tion of the mission of Mohammed was the 
year 1280 of the Hejira, or 1863-1864 of our 
era. It was at this epoch (April, 1864) that 
Baha Ullah, on leaving Bagdad for Constanti- 
nople, declared to those who surrounded him 
that he was the Manifestation announced by 
the Bab." In like manner Abdul Baha finds 
in the forty-two months of Revelation xi. 2 a 
reference to the twelve hundred and sixty 
years which reached from the Hejira of Mo- 
hammed to the disclosure of the Bab. The 
two witnesses mentioned in the same chapter 
he identifies with Mohammed and Ali. With 
an exhibition of genuine Shiite antipathy he 
makes the beast ascending from the pit to 
figure the Ommeyades. In the woman por- 



BAHAISM 305 

trayed in Revelation xii he sees the law of 
God that descended on Mohammed, while the 
sun with which she was clothed and the moon 
under her feet typify the two kingdoms of 
Persia and Turkey, and the twelve stars in 
her crown stand for the twelve Imams. Other 
interpretations of a kindred tenor might be 
noted. 45 

A genius for utilizing prophecy, not second 
to that of Abdul Baha, has been put on ex- 
hibition by Kheiralla. Mohammed's appear- 
ance and influence upon the world, he assures 
us, were foretold by Isaiah, Ezekiel, Malachi, 
and Christ. As for the Bab and Baha Ullah, he 
informs us that nearly the whole list of the 
biblical prophets have occupied themselves in 
describing their coming, the incidents of their 
career, or the world conditions contemporary 
with their ministry. 46 The rejection of Subh-i- 
Azal, on account of his refusal to accept the 
claims of Baha Ullah, he likens to the casting 
of Satan out of heaven. 47 In less detailed 
form a similar use is made of the prophecies 
by Thornton Chase. 48 Another American 
convert, A. P. Dodge, asserts of Bahaism: 
"The whole grand work is in fulfillment of 



46 See Barney, Some Answered Questions, pp. 49-82. 
«Baha Ullah, pp. 344ff. «Ibid., p. 417. 

«The Bahai Revelation, pp. SOff. 



306 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

prophecy in both the Old Testament and the 
New." 49 

3. The nature and destiny of man. The 
Bahai literature is rather meager and incon- 
clusive on the theme. From the extent to 
which the successive Manifestations are identi- 
fied with one another it might be inferred that 
a place is given to the supposition of pre- 
existence or reincarnation. Abdul Baha, how- 
ever, contends that the advocates of reincarna- 
tion furnish no proofs, and argues against it at 
some length. 50 On the other hand Kheiralla 
explicitly approves the doctrine of reincarna- 
tion. 51 As in the rift in the brotherhood the 
larger part went with Abdul Baha, it may be 
presumed that his view has the larger currency. 

On the question of evolution Abdul Baha 
and Kheiralla agree that man did not originate 
from animal antecedents by transmutation of 
species. Through whatever stages he has 
passed in the matrix of the world he has been 
of the same species all the way through. 52 

In respect of man's present condition little 
account is made of human sinfulness. A 



49 Cited by Speer, Missions and Modern History, I, p. 165. 
B0 Some Answered Questions, pp. 319-326. 
"Baha Ullah, pp. 129-139, 249. 

52 Abdul Baha, Some Answered Questions, pp. 222-226; 
Kheiralla, Baha Ullah, pp. 143ff. 



BAHAISM 307 

vigorous inculcation of the need of radical 
repentance is not characteristic of Bahai teach- 
ing. That teaching is not adapted, according 
to the judgment of a missionary observer, 
to generate moral stamina. 53 

Professor Browne has noticed the occasion 
for surprise which he experienced on the score 
of "the varying and unfixed character" of the 
Bahai teaching respecting the immortality of 
the soul. 54 In another connection he records 
the conclusion that, while all the Babis (or 
Bahais) deny a bodily resurrection, some dis- 
believe in personal immortality, or limit it 
to men endowed with a higher grade of spirit 
than pertains to ordinary mortals. 55 This 
limitation appears in the interpretation of 
Bahai teaching by Myron Phelps. For the 
masses wrapped in ignorance and selfishness, 
he says, there is no future except in the con- 
tinued influence of their thoughts and deeds. 
"They are like the leaves of a tree which fall 
in myriads and only avail to enrich the soil." 56 



53 Dr. Shedd, cited by Speer, Missions and Modern His- 
tory, I, p. 182. 

^Introduction to Life and Teachings of Abbas Effendi by 
Phelps, pp. xxi, xxii. 

66 Article Bab, Babis, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics. 

66 Life and Teachings of Abbas Effendi, pp. 121, 125. Com- 
pare Gobineau, Les Religions et les Philosophies dans I'Asie 
Centrale, p. 334. 



308 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

4. Regulations for the family and the state. 
The fundamental law of Bahaism permits 
bigamy, though in a mild way advising monog- 
amy; that is, it permits a man to have two 
wives, but not a woman to have two husbands. 
The text of the law as recorded in the Kitab-i- 
Akdas of Baha Ullah is as follows: "God hath 
decreed you to marry. Beware of marrying 
more than two, and whosoever is content with 
one attaineth peace for himself and her." 57 
Baha Ullah practiced the liberty granted by 
his law; or, rather, he transcended it as Mo- 
hammed in his time overstepped the rule which 
he laid down for believers in general. Very 
substantial evidence shows that he had three 
wives contemporaneously, or two wives and a 
concubine, and also that he took the second 
at a time when he already had children by the 
first. 58 

The law of divorce, as contained in the 
Kitab-i-Akdas, runs as follows: "If quarrels 
arise between a man and his wife, he may 
put her away. He may not give her absolute 
divorce at once, but must wait a year that 



67 The Bab had established a like rule. Gobineau, Les 
Religions et les Philosophies dans l'Asie Centrale, p. 346. 

68 Browne, A Traveller's Narrative, pp. 84, 361; The New 
History, pp. 273, 415; Wilson, Bahaism and its Claims, 
pp. 158-163. 



BAHAISM 309 

perhaps he may be reconciled to her. At the 
end of this period, if he still wishes to put 
her away, he is at liberty to do so." 59 

It is to be observed that both in the permit 
of bigamy and in the law for divorce the 
subordination of the woman to the man is 
assumed. The principle of equality is un- 
equivocally, if not formally, denied. Doubtless 
Bahaism improved somewhat on the customary 
Moslem regulations respecting the status of 
woman. But the improvement is not funda- 
mental in principle. In practice, too, certain 
liberal parties among Moslems, who have felt 
the impact of Western civilization, are said to 
have gone even further than the Bahais in the 
concession of liberty and education to women. 60 

On the whole it must be said that the un- 
willingness of Western advocates of Bahaism to 
bring out the real facts respecting its domestic 
code, and respecting the way in which Baha 
Ullah himself illustrated the code in practice, 
is quite intelligible. 61 

Original Bahaism contemplated the displace- 
ment of the existing secular government, at 

69 Browne, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, October, 
1892. 

6°Wilson, pp. 169, 170. 

61 An exception appears in Kheiralla's outspoken defense 
of polygamy (In his book, "O Christians! Why Do Ye Be- 
lieve Not on Christ?" 1917, pp. 77-86). 



310 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

least in Persia, and the substitution of prophet- 
ical authority. 62 As is indicated in the Bayan, 
its program denied to unbelievers the right 
of residence in the five principal provinces of 
Persia, and also ordained that those who re- 
ject the faith should be deprived of their 
goods, on condition of restoration when they 
come to believe. 63 

From this platform Baha Ullah distinctly 
receded. Recognizing that professed loyalty to 
existing governments was for his followers a 
condition of existence, he resorted to the policy 
of political opportunism, and his lieutenants 
rewrote — and in good measure falsified — the 
early Babi history with the design of placating 
the royal house of Persia. All this, however, 
is far from implying that prophetical authority 
was designed in perpetuity to resign the con- 
trol of the state to secular hands. Giving 
full scope to the expectation that his religion 
would come into the ascendant, Baha Ullah 
provided for the rule of the lesser and greater 
divisions of the world by Houses of Justice. 
These tribunals, made up of men holding the 
Bahai faith, are designed to direct both secular 
and religious affairs. The decisions of the 



62 Browne, The New History, p. xvii. 

63 The New History, p. 441; Nicolas, Le Beyan Arabe, 
p. 147. 



BAHAISM 311 

Houses of Justice, as is emphatically declared 
by Abdul Baha, will be final, and these de- 
cisions will be made in conformity with the 
prescriptions of Baha Ullah. In religious, civil, 
and criminal matters alike the voice of the 
Prophet of Acre will give the imperative 
word. 64 In short, nothing less than an iron- 
clad, world-dominating theocracy is contem- 
plated. What degree of intellectual and 
religious liberty might be expected under 
this regime is suggested by the order of Abdul 
Baha that no tract, book, or translation on the 
Bahai religion shall be published without the 
prior submission of it to the censor at Acre. 65 

One great function which, it is presumed, 
will be fulfilled by the supreme House of 
Justice, is the conservation of international 
peace. Acting as a board of arbitration it 
will settle all disputes between the nations. 66 
Great account was made of this phase of the 
Bahai scheme by Abdul Baha in his London 
addresses. The limited warrant for some of 
his representations will appear later. 

5. The ceremonial feature. The very little 
that can be said on this subject needs to be 



M See the full citations of Wilson, pp. 141-147; Dreyfus, 
The Universal Religion, pp. 131ff. 

65 Star of the West, July 13, 1913, p. 121. 
6 «Baha Ullah, Tablet of the World. 



312 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

preceded by a reference to the singular arrange- 
ment of the calendar to which Bahaism re- 
sorted. Attaching immeasurable sanctity to the 
number nineteen, it makes the year to consist 
of nineteen months, each of which is composed 
of nineteen days. As this scheme gives a sum 
of only three hundred and sixty-one days, 
several days are added at the close of the 
year. From what point the series of years 
should be reckoned seems not to have been 
thoroughly determined. The beginning of the 
era has been placed at the manifestation of 
the Bab in 1844, again at the birth of Baha 
Ullah in 1817, still further at the year 1892, 
when Abdul Baha succeeded his father as 
visible head of the Bahai cult. In the whole 
arrangement of the calendar Christianity is left 
out of the account. Even the week of seven 
days, common to Judaism, Christianity, and 
Mohammedanism, is discarded, so far as 
authoritative recognition is concerned, though 
accommodation to Mohammedan customs, 
where the faith of Islam prevails, would nec- 
essarily involve a certain practical recognition 
of the seven-day interval. A special sanctity 
is attached to the first and ninth days of 
each month of nineteen days. 

The Bahai prescriptions on fasting and 
prayer follow the Moslem rules with some 



BAHAISM 313 

modifications. The last month, as specified 
in the revised calendar, is the one set apart 
for fasting, abstinence being enjoined from sun- 
rise to sunset on each of its nineteen days. 
Prayers, embodied in prescribed formulas, are 
ordained to be repeated three times a day, 
and each prayer is to be accompanied by 
three prostrations. The worshiper is expected 
to face toward Acre. Congregational prayers 
are discountenanced, though Abdul Baha made 
some concessions to American disciples on this 
point. As respects sacramental rites, a "unity 
feast," which is in a manner a substitute for 
the eucharist, has place. For baptism there 
is no longer any need, according to a state- 
ment of Abdul Baha. 67 As might be inferred 
from the above, the public service of Bahai 
congregations is substantially limited to hymns, 
readings from the Bahai oracles, and exposi- 
tions of the accepted teachings. 

Formally Bahaism makes no mention of a 
priesthood as a factor in its system for the 
conduct of rites or other functions. But in- 
trinsically it provides for one in the member- 
ship of the Houses of Justice. As absorbing 
in itself both civil and religious authority, 
and designed to serve as a substitute for the 
dictatorship of Abdul Baha, this membership 

67 Some Answered Questions, pp. 105, 106. 



314 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

could easily become, in case of any wide exten- 
sion of Bahaism, a very formidable hierarchy. 

IV. The Position Accorded to Baha 
Ullah and to Abdul Baha 
In the exposition of the nature and au- 
thority attributed to the Prophet or Mani- 
festation a basis of judgment on the position 
accorded to Baha Ullah has already been given. 
In that exposition it was noticed that appar- 
ently contradictory phases of teaching are 
found in juxtaposition. We cannot hope, 
therefore, to give a perfectly clear definition 
of the position assigned to Baha Ullah. Should 
we refer to him as an alleged incarnation of 
God, we could be directed to sentences in 
Bahai literature which seem to discountenance 
the idea of a divine incarnation. Some of 
these have been cited on a preceding page. 
They seem to be in line with this declaration 
of the Bab: "In truth the eternal essence 
does not incarnate itself in any creature." 68 
On the other hand declarations are met with 
which as good as affirm that Baha Ullah is 
an incarnation of God, and especially of the 
Eternal Father. For instance, in the preface 
to the volume which he devotes to the founder 
of his religion Kheiralla frankly declares his 

^Nicolas, Le Beyan Arabe, p. 24. 



BAHAISM 315 

purpose to demonstrate "that the Everlasting 
Father, the Prince of Peace, has appeared in 
human form as Beha Ullah, and established 
his kingdom upon earth." 69 Again he writes: 
"The universal manifestation of Beha Ullah 
in Adrianople in 1867 was the revelation of 
his divinity to the whole world, for at that 
time he began to summon the kings and rulers 
of the earth to his spiritual banquet, announcing 
himself to be the Incarnation of the Everlast- 
ing Father." 70 That others of the Bahais have 
been ready to apply the name of God to the 
head of their cult is distinctly in evidence. 
When in Persia Professor Browne was advised 
"to go to Acre and see God." 71 A like character 
was assigned to Baha Ullah by the devotee 
at Tabriz, who declared to Dr. S. G. Wilson, 
"Baha is very God of very God." 72 This lan- 
guage is rivaled by an American writer who 
speaks of Baha as "the Manifested God him- 
self," 73 as also by the writer who affirms, "Baha 
Ullah is the trainer of the whole universe; 
his teachings are the cause of the life of the 
worlds, the unity and harmony of the crea- 



69 Beha Ullah, Preface, p. ix. 70 Pp. 477, 478. 

n A Year Amongst the Persians, pp. 491, 492. 
72 Bahaism and its Claims, p. 36. 

73 C. M. Remey, Star of the West. March 2, 1913; The 
Bahai Movement, p. 43. 



316 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

tures." 74 Extraordinary as such forms of 
statement may be rated, they appear not to 
be without foundation in the terms used by 
the subject himself whom they were designed to 
glorify. He once summoned — so Abdul Baha 
reports — two men who had engaged in a heated 
dispute. "To the one he said: 'You say that 
I am God, and that there is no other. You 
are right.' To the other he said, 'You say 
that I am but the reflection of God, You 
are right.' Then to both he said: 'You are 
both right. But to contend will destroy you 
both. Go home and be friends.' " 75 The 
divine title, which in this instance was not 
rejected, may be regarded as arrogated in 
another and more significant relation. In the 
letter which he addressed to the pope Baha 
Ullah included these words : "The breath of God 
is diffused throughout the world, because the De- 
sired One has come in his most great glory. . . . 
The Father hath come, and that which hath 
been promised unto you in the kingdom is accom- 
plished. . . . This is indeed the Father, whereof 
Isaiah gave you tidings, and the Comforter 
whom the Spirit (that is, Christ) promised." 76 



"Isabella D. Brittingham, The Revelation of Baha Ullah, 
pp. 32, 33. 

"Phelps, Life and Teaching of Abdul Baha, pp. 135, 136. 
M Text as given by Kheiralla, Beha Ullah, pp. 533-537. 






BAHAISM 317 

We do not question that some Bahais prefer 
to speak of Baha Ullah as rather a mirror or 
manifestation of God than an incarnation of 
God. But the proof is quite adequate that 
a tendency was rapidly developed to apply 
the divine name to him without any specified 
limitation. Moreover, in Bahai references there 
are often associated with the term "Manifesta- 
tion" qualities or endowments which pass quite 
out of sight of ordinary human measures. 

Reference has been made by one or another 
reviewer to the complex role assigned to Baha 
Ullah. His disclosure has been identified in 
one instance with the manifestation of the 
Father, in another with the return of Christ, 
in a third with the advent of the Comforter. 77 
In his letter to the pope, Baha Ullah himself 
claimed the double character of the Father and 
the Comforter. The confusion is made all the 
more striking when account is taken of the 
acknowledgment that the Comforter came in 
Mohammed and that Christ returned in Abdul 
Baha. By what makeshift Bahais would care 
to attempt a reconciliation of these conflicting 
representations, we cannot imagine, unless it 
be an appeal to the misty notion of the sub- 
stantial identity of the successive Manifesta- 
tions. One exposition of this identity runs 

^Browne, A Year Amongst the Persians, pp. 311, 312, 



318 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

as follows: "From the purely spiritual view- 
point the Bahais regard all the prophets as 
the same, because of the one eternal, un- 
changeable truth which they, one and all, 
manifested; whereas, viewed from the human 
standpoint, these spiritual teachers are seen 
to be different personalities, giving different 
teachings and establishing different religious 
systems." 78 

In some relations Abdul Baha has been 
accorded simply the office of interpreting and 
giving practical effect to the teachings of his 
father. A part of the Bahai constituency has 
been inclined to insist that he is not entitled 
to transcend this function, or to figure as an 
oracle of revelation. But many, including the 
majority of American Bahais, have taken a 
larger view of his position and prerogatives. 
They have not hesitated to identify him with 
Christ in his second coming, and to magnify 
his authority in proportion to this high stand- 
ing. Thus M. Abul Karim declares: "God 
appeared in the Bab as the Holy Ghost, in 
Baha as the Father, in Abbas [Abdul Baha] 
as his Son." 79 C. M. Remey writes: "Abdul 
Baha is the beloved son into whose hands has 
been intrusted the guidance of the people of 

78 Remey, The Bahai Movement, p. 37. 

79 Cited by Wilson, Bahaism and its. Claims, p. 40. 



BAHAISM 319 

the kingdom. . . . He comes with the power of 
God to live and manifest the life of the king- 
dom." 80 "He is the Center of Guidance — the 
Center of the Covenant; therefore all must 
turn wholly and without reserve unto him. . . . 
The Center of the Covenant is the Divine 
physician to the world besides whom there is 
no other." 81 An equivalent estimate is ren- 
dered by P. K. Dealy in the declaration that 
Abdul Baha "is the Lord and Master of the 
Father's kingdom on this earth, the same one 
whom the Christian Church is looking for and 
expecting to come." 82 

Doubtless reference can be made to words 
of Abdul Baha in which he has disclaimed a 
title to the high ascriptions rendered to him. 
As a man of diplomatic gift he knew the value 
of not appearing, in certain environments, to 
claim too much. But he has also indicated 
that incense of a very extraordinary kind is 
not unwelcome. For example, he approved 
for publication an ode written by Thornton 
Chase in which he is glorified with such epithets 
as the following: "Thou Enlightener of the 



80 The Bahai Movement, pp. 26, 27. 

81 Star of the West, September 8, 1913, p. 172; December 
31, 1913, p. 274. 

ffi The Dawn of Knowledge and the Most Great Peace, 
p. 32. 



320 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

Spirits of Men! Thou Heart of the World! 
Thou Physician of Souls! Thou Prince of 
Peace! Thou Right Arm of the Mighty! 
Thou Lord of the Sabbath of Ages! Thou 
Sum of Spiritual and Human Perfections! 
Thou Mystery of God!" 83 The question nat- 
urally arises, how much further along this 
line Abdul Baha would need to have gone in 
order to assert the claim which his father 
made — for the next thousand years — the mark 
of an impostor. 

It has often been thought that apotheosis 
is something which pertains to remote and 
uncritical ages. That it can occur in such a 
period as is inclosed in the later years of the 
nineteenth century and the first decades of 
the twentieth is clearly enough attested by the 
facts stated above. 

V. The Impotency of Bahaism to Fulfill 
its Ambitious Scheme 

The expectation that their religion will 
soon make conquest of the world has not 
infrequently been given emphatic expression 
by Bahai propagandists. Occasionally, too, 
writers not affiliating with the religion have 
ascribed to it very large possibilities. In our 

wStar of the West, September 27, 1913, pp. 187, 183. 



BAHAISM 321 

view there are substantial reasons for rating 
this highly colored prospect as fanciful and 
groundless. Indeed, it seems like paying ex- 
cessive consideration to a hopeless cause to 
discuss the subject of world conquest by 
this religion. We deem it best, however, to 
record some definite reasons for ascribing only 
a very limited outlook to Bahai propagandism. 
1. The measure of success already gained 
promises no extraordinary advance. The appre- 
ciable victory won in Persia by Babism (or 
Bahaism, to use the later name) is explained 
by special conditions. Among these was the 
fresh zeal enkindled by the conviction that at 
length the Imam, who had, for so many cen- 
turies, been the object of longing and expecta- 
tion, had given sure tokens of his presence 
and agency. Men possessed by this conviction 
became ardent propagandists and were ready 
to engage in bold enterprises and to endure 
great sacrifices. So the movement spread with 
striking rapidity. But the heroic days being 
once over and the excitement cooled down, 
the means of advance were greatly curtailed, 
and Bahaism was brought to a relatively 
stationary condition. As has been stated, 
missionaries long in the field do not estimate 
its following in Persia above two hundred 
thousand. The number won in the rest of 



322 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

the world is comparatively insignificant. Limit- 
ing the survey to the half century since Baha 
Ullah declared himself we can find no ground 
for legitimate boasting or confidence. Within 
that period Christianity has won in single 
missionary fields more converts than the 
probable totality of Bahai adherents at the 
present day. In the same time new-fangled 
religions, which have started up since the 
announcement of Baha Ullah, have gained 
larger constituencies than Bahaism numbers 
outside of the Persian domain. The measure 
of its success clearly promises no great vic- 
tories in the future. 

2. The antecedents of Bahaism must operate 
as the reverse of a credential in the sight of a 
great part of the religious world. Not merely 
did Bahaism issue from Mohammedanism, but 
it was so implicated with it as to be led to 
treat it as a necessary foundation. To the 
Mohammedan religion in general, and to the 
Shiite phase in particular, it assigned the 
character of unimpeachable manifestations of 
the divine will. It, indeed, acknowledged 
Christ and the Gospels, but not by any means 
as taking precedence of Mohammed and the 
Koran. The latter were placed on a parity 
with the former, or rather given a certain 
preeminence over them. The Bab, as has been 



BAHAISM 323 

noticed, distinctly affirmed preeminence, and 
while lie felt free to modify the regulations 
of the ancestral religion, he nevertheless took 
pains to claim for it perpetual recognition. 
"Whoever," he wrote, "denies Islam, Ullah 
will not accept from him any of his actions 
in the day of the resurrection." 84 Those who 
succeeded the Bab, as having their eyes di- 
rected to opportunities of propagandism in 
Christian lands, may not have been quite so 
outspoken; but in no wise have they curtailed 
the assumption of the divine origin and au- 
thority of Mohammedanism. They place Mo- 
hammed in the list of the great Manifestations, 
and by their theory of progressive advance 
in the series of divine messages, they carry 
the inference that a certain superiority must 
be accorded to the revelation of the Arabian 
Prophet over that of Jesus Christ. When, 
therefore, a Christian is asked to embrace 
Bahaism he is implicitly requested to rate 
his own religion below a parity with Moham- 
medanism. He is also asked to place the 
stamp of approval on the Shiite doctrine of 
the Imam. To neither of these demands can 
he consistently yield. He is forbidden to 
acquiesce in them not merely by sentiment, 

84 Cited by Vatralsky, Mohammedan Gnosticism in Amer- 
ica, p. 78. 



324 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

but by unequivocal dictates of historical facts 
and rational considerations. 

In placing Mohammed and his religion even 
on a parity with Christ and his religion Chris- 
tendom would condemn itself to intellectual 
self -stultification. The personal record of 
Mohammed was demonstrably of a mixed 
character. Even the earlier part of his prophet- 
ical career, which recent historical criticism is 
largely inclined to regard as indicative of 
earnest conviction and straightforward religious 
purpose, does not appear unstained. It was 
a wretched compromise into which he was 
beguiled by his desire for outward success when 
he publicly declared that the veneration of 
the three goddesses recognized in the Meccan 
idolatry might be hoped for. If we suppose 
that his own conscience rather than the shame 
of his followers compelled the recall of this 
perverse message, it would not be a decisive 
proof against his general good intention at 
this stage, and would only show that he was 
liable to be overborne by temptation. But 
whatever chance there may be for a charitable 
judgment on this unhappy incident of his 
earlier career, it is quite impossible to invent 
a sane apology for various incidents and 
features of his later career. In claiming the 
sanction of divine revelation for unlimited 



BAHAISM 325 

license for himself in the matter of wives, in 
resorting to a like sanction for marriage with 
Zainab, the divorced wife of his adopted son 
Zaid (divorced on purpose to accommodate his 
known lust for her), in appealing to the same 
high authority for the purpose of silencing 
murmurs in his harem over his liaison with the 
Coptic slave girl Mary 85 — in all this abject 
abasement of the office of revelation Moham- 
med showed either that he had become the 
helpless dupe of his own wishes, or else that 
he was ready to go to any length in the role 
of pious fraud which his convenience or pleasure 
might dictate. Add to these instances of 
burlesque on the idea of revelation his legal- 
izing of robberies such as the lax code of his 
countrymen discountenanced — robberies of pil- 
grims on the way to Mecca; also his bringing 
of the captive Jewess Safia to his bed three 
days after the slaughter of her relatives in 
battle, in defiance of the decent custom which 
prescribed that an interval of three months 
should be granted to a captive thus bereaved; 
further his complete extermination of a Jewish 
tribe by the execution of all the men and the 
enslavement of all the women and children; 
weigh matters of this sort without bias, and 
who can consent to associate them with a 



^Koran, suras xxiii and lxvi. 



326 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

prophet of God rather than with an egoist, 
a fanatic, or a combination of the two? The 
words which a judicial writer applies to the 
last ten years of Mohammed's career but 
express the verdict demanded by well-authen- 
ticated facts. "There can be no 'shadow of 
question," says D. B. Macdonald, "that in 
those last years he forged the awful machinery 
of divine inspiration to serve his own ignoble 
and selfish purpose." 86 Contrasting the con- 
fidence with which the Christian can appeal 
to Christ with the lack of security with which 
the believer in Islam can appeal back to Mo- 
hammed, he writes: "It is only when his figure 
is seen through the mist of tradition, surrounded 
by the awe and reverence of the unexamining, 
the uncritical, and the morally undeveloped, 
that there can be any thought of taking him as 
a religious guide and pattern for life." 87 

As it is impossible for intelligent Christians 
to be reconciled to the personal record of Mo- 
hammed, so it is quite inconceivable that 
they should be willing to place his religion, 
as authentically embodied in the Koran, on a 
parity with their own. The religious system 
reflects the limitations of its author, and falls 
much below the biblical level. Mohammed, 
to be sure, had a species of acquaintance 

86 Aspects of Islam, p. 74. 87 Ibid., pp. 110, 111. 



BAHAISM 327 

with the biblical religion. It was, however, a 
mutilated secondhand acquaintance, and was 
far from amounting to authentic knowledge. 
Oral, legendary, heretical, and apocryphal 
sources supplied him with such materials as 
he utilized. Possibly, as some writers have 
judged, especially on the basis of Suras xxii 
and xxiv, he may have been acquainted with 
the Second Epistle of Peter, 88 but, generally 
speaking, it is perfectly evident that he had 
no real knowledge of the canonical Scriptures. 
The proof lies in the character of the matter 
which he appropriated and in the glaring mis- 
placement and misconstruction of facts in 
which he indulged. In connection with the 
Old Testament history the material upon 
which he laid hold was of the nature of post- 
canonical traditions and legends. About one 
fourth of the entire Koran consists of late 
Jewish haggadah or saint lore. His citations 
from the New Testament sphere are largely 
suggestive of the spurious Gospels of the 
Infancy of Jesus and of the tenets of Oriental 
Gnosticism. To indicate the quality of his 
strange dealing with the facts of religious 
history, it may be noted that he placed Haman 
back in the time of Pharaoh; 89 identified 

^Hubert Grimme, Mohammed, Theil II, p. 33. 
^Koran, xl. 25. 



328 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

Mary, the mother of Jesus, with Miriam, the 
sister of Aaron and Moses; 90 and imputed to 
Christians the acknowledgment of Mary as 
one of the Persons of the Trinity. 91 It has 
been concluded also by many interpreters 
that he made the angel Gabriel and the Holy 
Spirit one and the same agent. 92 Quite in 
line with Gnostic Docetism he reduced the 
crucifixion to a deceptive appearance. 93 In 
short, his acquaintance with the biblical re- 
ligion amounted simply to an incidental con- 
tact with a debased version. He could not 
and did not use the biblical content in any 
adequate way as a basis of his own system. 
In cardinal particulars his system falls dis- 
tinctly below the biblical plane, and especially 
below the level of its outcome in the New 
Testament revelation. 

Giving a partial illustration of the relative 
inferiority of the Koranic system we notice 
in the first place its one-sided stress on the 
sovereignty of God. Its reference to the mercy 
or compassion of God is mostly in a recurring 
formal phrase and is not adapted to give any 
vivid impression of this attribute. In repre- 
sentations which effectively picture the near- 
ness, tenderness, and love of God, it is barren 

90 Koran/<iii, 31, xix, 28-35, lxvi, 12. 

91 Ibid., v. 79, 116. 92 Ibid., xvi, 104. 93 Ibid., iv, 156. 



BAHAISM 329 

as compared with the Bible. In numerous 
instances divine sovereignty is described in 
terms which identify it with crushing, relent- 
less, arbitrary might. Nothing better surely 
can be discovered in such declarations as these 
respecting God: "He forgives whom he will, 
and punishes whom he will, for he is mighty 
over all." 94 "We have created for hell many 
of the jinn and of mankind." 95 "It is not 
for any person to believe save by the per- 
mission of God; he puts horror on those who 
have no sense." 96 "God leads whom he will 
astray, and guides whom he will." 97 "He 
pardons whom he pleases, and torments whom 
he pleases." 98 

Doubtless sentences of a different tenor, or 
such as presume upon human freedom, are 
contained in the Koran. But they do not 
counterbalance the impression of arbitrary 
might which is stamped upon its pages. More- 
over, on the principle of Mohammedan exe- 
gesis, that in case of contradictory representa- 
tions the later cancel the earlier, it is not 
certain that the acknowledgments of human 
freedom can be counted authoritative. These, 
according to Hubert Grimme, belong to the 
early Meccan period in Mohammed's career, 

94 Ibid., ii, 284, v, 21. 9B Ibid., vii, 178. 96 Ibid., x, 100. 
fl7 Ibid., xiv, 4, xxxv, 9. 98 Ibid., xlviii, 14. 



330 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

whereas the strong statements which reduce 
men to the rank of helpless instruments or 
playthings of almighty power were penned in 
his later years." 

In rather striking correspondence with his 
later stress on divine arbitrariness, Moham- 
med came to exalt the sword as an instrument 
of religious propagandism, and thus fell far 
below the plane of New Testament teaching, 
whatever may be said of certain chapters in 
the Old Testament. The Koran not merely 
permits, but commands, bloody violence against 
unbelievers up to the point of their surrender 
to the demands of Mohammedan authority. 
The orders run thus: "When the sacred 
months are passed away, kill the idolaters 
wherever ye may find them, and besiege them, 
and lie in wait for them in every place of 
observation." 100 "O ye who believe fight those 
who are near to you of the misbelievers, and 
let them find in you sternness; and know that 
God is with those who fear." 101 "When ye 
encounter the unbelievers, strike off their 
heads, until ye have made a great slaughter 
among them; and bind them in bonds; and 
either give them a free dismission afterward, 
or exact a ransom until the war shall have 



"Cited by Goldziher, Vorlesungen iiber den Islam, p. 94. 
l00 Koran, ix, 5. 101 Ibid., ix, 124. 



BAHAISM 331 

laid down its arms." 102 It may be admitted 
that the scheme ordained for Arabia was not 
prescribed in its full rigor to outside countries. 
But military conquest of those countries for 
the sake of religion — for the sake of extend- 
ing Mohammedan dominion, and so for the 
ultimate purpose of extending Mohammedan 
religion — was an integral part of the regime 
which the Arabian Prophet bequeathed to 
his followers. 103 The arbitrary God and 
the forcible propagation of religion stand 
out as companion features in his teach- 
ing. 

One further ground of radical objection to 
the system of Mohammed must be awarded a 
brief mention. It distinctly legalizes polyg- 
amy, concubinage, and facility of divorce. As 
has been indicated, the Prophet through a 
special revelation set aside all restrictions for 
himself as respects the number of his wives 
and concubines. 104 The rest of the faithful he 
restricted to four wives, but put them on a 
parity with himself in leaving them free to 
take any number of concubines. 105 As regards 
divorce, the husband was armed with auto- 
cratic power, the wife left without resource 



102 Ibid., xlvii, 4-7. 

103 Compare Goldziher, Vorlesungen tiber den Islam, p. 25. 

1M Koran, xxxiii, 48, 49. 105 Ibid., iv, 3, 29, lxx, 30. 



332 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

against his caprice. 106 The husband was even 
licensed to use physical violence against the 
wife. The professedly infallible code has this 
prescription: "Those whose perverseness ye 
fear, admonish them, and remove them into 
bed-chambers and beat them." 107 It is unneces- 
sary to add that it would involve a long stretch 
of debasement for a Christian consciousness, 
which has been developed on the basis of the 
New Testament, to descend to the plane of 
these features of the teaching of Mohammed. 

As was noticed at the beginning of this 
topic, an examination of Mohammed and his 
system is relevant, not simply because Baha- 
ism issued therefrom, but because it demands, 
in virtue of its fundamental conception of the 
scheme of revelation, that they should be 
recognized either as being on a parity with 
Christ and his teaching, or — as is more or 
less openly taught in various instances — having 
a certain preeminence over them. The dis- 
cussion is designed to emphasize the truth 
that Christians as a body must decisively 
reject this demand. It is a perfectly insuper- 
able barrier in the way of a rational acqui- 
escence in Bahaism. 

It remains to touch briefly on the ante- 
cedent furnished by the Shiite doctrine of the 

106 Koran, ii, 228, 229, xxxiii, 47-51. 107 Ibid., iv, 36. 



BAHAISM 333 

Imam. Of course there is no basis for this 
doctrine in so far as the divine right of Mo- 
hammedanism is subject to challenge. The 
special phase loses necessarily all authority 
when the foundation is taken away from the 
general system to which it belongs. But even 
if Mohammedanism in its general scope could 
be approved, it would by no means follow 
that the Shiite notion of the Imam has any 
legitimacy. It is in truth fanciful, arbitrary, 
and improbable. One can, indeed, sympathize 
in a measure with the Shiite grief over the 
hard fate of Ali and his progeny. However, 
the claim set up for them to an indefeasible 
right to headship over the faithful has no 
good basis. The Imam is conceived to rule 
as the successor of the Prophet Mohammed. 
His office, whatever other aspect it may in- 
clude, is largely in the religious and prophetical 
order. Now religious competency and prophet- 
ical gift are not matters of inheritance. They 
do not travel down a particular line of physical 
descent. The scheme based on the assumption 
that they can be held to such a line is mechan- 
ical and arbitrary. A mediaeval pope, even 
under an elective system, was none too faith- 
ful in conserving the spiritual interests of 
Christendom. What would a papacy be under 
a system which made the high office descend 



334 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

by incontrovertible right from father to son? 
The Shiite contention lies outside of rational 
sanction, and therefore outside of all prob- 
ability of divine approval. It follows, inas- 
much as Babism originated from the Shiite 
claim respecting the Imam, and Bahaism ranks 
as a modified version of Babism, that Baha- 
ism rests on a fanciful and illegitimate founda- 
tion. The Bab's relation to the Imam being 
in all probability apocryphal, there is no 
proper defense against rating the mission of 
Baha Ullah, who accounted the Bab his fore- 
runner, as likewise apocryphal. 

3. Bahaism has no sacred oracles fitted to 
compete with the Christian Scriptures. Mo- 
hammed appealed to the style and matter 
of the Koran as the great and sufficient cre- 
dential for his divine mission. Herein he 
furnished a precedent which both the Bab 
and Baha Ullah thought it worth while to 
follow. In their unique ability in composition 
they claimed to have proof that they were 
called of God and furnished by him for an 
extraordinary work. 

What does an examination of their writings 
reveal? It shows that they were not the 
peers even of Mohammed, and much less the 
peers of the leading biblical writers. In literary 
style and fullness of spiritual dynamic the 



BAHAISM 335 

best in the Koran falls much below the best 
of the Bible, while passages in the latter which 
exhibit high excellence vastly outnumber those 
to be found in the former. Doubtless the 
style of Mohammed exhibits a masculine vigor 
and testifies to a certain native genius. He 
was, however, much too boastful of his gift. 
The "incomparable Koran" might conceivably 
have been much better in respect of perspicuity, 
avoidance of wearisome repetition, and in 
various features of literary style, to say noth- 
ing about the quality of the matter. With 
still larger warrant his would-be successors 
in the nineteenth century can be taken to 
task for their boasting of a transcendent gift 
in composition. The unfavorable comment 
which the earliest Western reviewer, Gobineau, 
pronounced on the style of the Bab, 108 has 
been repeated by other competent investi- 
gators. The matter of the Bayan is encased 
in a thoroughly artificial framework, and con- 
siderable parts of it are so obscure as greatly 
to embarrass interpretation. That it should 
have fallen so speedily into neglect, together 
with other writings from the same source, 
may not have been altogether due to the 
fault of the Bab as a writer; but the fact of 



108 Les Religions et les Philosophies dans l'Asie Centrale, 
p. 147. 



336 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

disuse is more or less of a testimony to the 
lack of attractive qualities. Baha Ullah had 
a somewhat better gift of literary production. 
Moreover, in the course of his much longer 
career he had opportunity to gain a wider 
acquaintance with the treasures of religious 
thought in the world. In contrast with Mo- 
hammed he had some real acquaintance with 
the New Testament. It is possible to collect 
from his writings a considerable list of sen- 
tences which are penetrated with excellent 
religious sentiment. 109 But maxims quite as 
elevated in sentiment and expressed in finer 
style can be found in the Sufi literature and 
in the Buddhist scriptures, to say nothing 
about the abundant store in the Christian 
Bible. Moreover, there is very much in the 
productions of Baha Ullah that is deserving 
of scanty praise. He often lends his pen to 
rhapsody, to a cloying luxuriance, to obscure 
if not unmeaning collocations of words, to a 
style of expression to be described as rather 
fulsome than either chaste or energetic. Taken 
in its general cast his writing is in no wise 
comparable, as respects universal adaptation, 



109 An appreciable fraction of these is accessible in transla- 
tions from the Persian by Dreyfus under the title, Les pre'- 
cepts du Be haisme, Les Ornaments, Les Paroles du Paradis, 
Les Splendeurs, Paris, 1906. 



BAHAISM 337 

to the discourses of Jesus. It is inconceivable 
that it could ever approach in practical power 
to the ecumenical speech of the Son of man. 
There is, furthermore, a deficit as concerns a 
definite ascertainable canon. So far as we 
have been able to discover, no one has pre- 
sented an authoritative list of the Bahai 
scriptures. The writings of Baha Ullah — 
consisting largely of "tablets" or epistles — 
make a collection to which as yet exact di- 
mensions cannot be attributed, in which log- 
ical consecution is sadly lacking, and to go 
over which must greatly weary anyone who 
is not already a convinced and enthusiastic 
devotee. The book which more than any 
other is the Bible of the Bahais, the Kitab-i- 
Akdas, contains, it is true, in moderate com- 
pass, a considerable body of teachings, but 
its contents are badly arranged. With an 
overplus of positive rules it conjoins thoroughly 
heterogeneous materials. That Bahaists them- 
selves have no great confidence in its power 
of appeal is indicated by their singular back- 
wardness in giving it to the public in trans- 
lated form. In fine, there is no substantial 
reason for supposing that the sacred literature 
of Bahaism has any real ability to compete 
with the Christian Bible. 

Reference was made to efforts to accredit 



338 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

the Bahai revelation by finding in its leading 
agents and events the fulfillment of various 
biblical forecasts. What is appropriate here 
is to indicate more specifically the worthless- 
ness of this expedient. It is quite futile as 
resting on arbitrary and incredible assumptions. 
In the first place, in assuming that Old and 
New Testament prophecies apply preeminently 
to a Mohammedan domain Bahai interpreta- 
tion carries the prophets into a field entirely 
foreign to their knowledge and interest. This 
violent diremption of premonition from a 
historical ground must be repudiated by a 
sober biblical criticism. In the second place, 
the Bahai application of the prophecies is 
discredited by all the evidence which demon- 
strates the superiority of Christ and the New 
Testament to Mohammed and the Koran. 
The prophetical ideals in their loftiness and 
wealth must be regarded as linked with the 
higher line of developments, not with the 
lower in which they receive no adequate ful- 
fillment. In the third place, the exegesis of 
the Bahai apologists is vitiated by its premise 
on the legitimacy of the Shiite doctrine of the 
Imam, a doctrine which has been shown to 
be too artificial to deserve any credence. Why 
should Old Testament or New Testament 
prophecy be supposed to authenticate the 



BAHAISM 339 

mission of the Bab, the mission of a "Gate" 
to an apocryphal entity styled the Imam? 
Finally the Bahai dealing with the biblical 
prophecies is in its details a piece of fanciful 
and aberrant construction. It is subject to 
the same criticisms which apply to the radical 
Adventism from which it has so largely bor- 
rowed. 110 For instance, like their Christian 
predecessors, the Bahai interpreters turn the 
"days" of prophecy into "years" wherever it 
suits their theories to intrude long periods. 
For this procedure there is no proper biblical 
warrant. The forms of expression in Numbers 
xiv. 34 and Ezekiel iv. 4-6, which have been 
cited in its behalf, do not apply. "In the 
first of these passages no symbolical import 
is attached to the 'days,' the statement being 
that the rebellious Israelites should be pun- 
ished as many years as it took days to spy 
out the land of Canaan; and in the second 
passage it is formally stated that the days 
employed by the prophet in passing through 
a certain role should be typical of years of 
national experience. In neither passage is 
there a hint that it was a habit of biblical 
writers to use days, without note or explana- 
tion, as symbolical of years." Nothing but 

U0 See the author's Studies in Recent Adventism, especially 
pp. 100-113. 



340 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

the convenience of the advocate who has made 
a diagram of history, and wants large numbers 
to bridge over correspondingly large intervals, 
is at the basis of this style of interpretation. 
As on this point the apologists of Bahaism 
imitate the fanciful construction of radical 
Adventism, so also in respect of an arbitrary 
choice of starting-points for their reckoning. 
Since the selected numbers must end at a 
year which marks an era in the origin or progress 
of Bahaism, they must be made to begin 
where the length of the intervals requires. 
Abdul Baha furnishes a striking illustration. 111 
"He explains Daniel viii. 14 by taking the 
solar year. He calculates that the twenty- 
three hundred days were completed at the 
Bab's manifestation in 1844. In Daniel xii. 6 [7] 
the lunar year is resorted to, and the forty- 
two months (twelve hundred and sixty years) 
are dated from the hejira of Mohammed, but 
Daniel xii. 11 does not come exactly right, 
so the terminus a quo is made to be the prophet- 
hood of Mohammed, three years after his 
mission, which was ten years before the hejira. 
By this means the date of Baha's manifesta- 
tion (1863) is reached." 112 

Evidently, the attempt of Bahaism to utilize 

ul Some Answered Questions, pp. 49-52. 
ll8 Wilson, Bahaism and its Claims, pp. 98, 99. 



BAHAISM 341 

biblical prophecy as a support to its own 
revelation is an utter miscarriage. That so re- 
sponsible a representative as Abdul Baha should 
have engaged in the abortive procedure must be 
regarded as the reverse of a commendation of 
the cause which he attempted to bolster up. 

4. The 'personalities placed at the front by 
Bahaism lack the needful power of appeal. 
Under this proposition there is little occasion 
to consider Mirza Ali Mohammed, the Bab. 
As respects his personal traits, there may be 
some ground for the judgment that they 
compared favorably with those of his am- 
bitious successors; but they cannot be regarded 
as vitally affecting the chances of successful 
propagandism of Bahaism. He has practically 
been retired from a place of leadership in the 
religion which he started. As ultimately dis- 
posed the responsible leadership of Bahaism 
was concentrated in Baha Ullah. In a second- 
ary degree the headship passed on to Abdul 
Baha. He did not, it is true, formally claim 
the right to make additions to the revelations 
given by his father; but in assuming to be an 
authoritative interpreter of those revelations 
he grasped a function of no small practical 
significance. As has been indicated, some of 
his followers have asserted for him the rank 
of the returning Christ, the Son of God. 



342 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

Whatever Baha Ullah may have been in 
respect of personal characteristics, he has not 
been effectively presented, and apparently 
cannot be so presented, to the world at large. 
The dramatic seclusion which he cultivated at 
Acre, or during substantially the whole of 
his prophetical career, was not at all calculated 
to visualize him to the public. The pilgrims 
who, after removing their shoes, were ushered 
into his presence in small groups, may have 
been rather deeply impressed by his appear- 
ance and demeanor. But no means were 
provided for giving wide diffusion to any vital 
impression, supposing such to have been made 
upon individual visitors. As compared with 
the manifold scenes of the Gospel narratives, 
which work perennially with marvelous virtue 
to project the image of the historical Christ 
and to bring human hearts into captivity to 
him, Baha Ullah appears as a vague, distant, 
and powerless figure. For men in general it 
is impossible to feel that in viewing his career 
they are contemplating a real drama. Un- 
avoidably there arises a suggestion of a piece 
of acting, of an attempt to function in a role 
that does not fit the subject. And this sug- 
gestion is distinctly aggravated by the dis- 
covery that the man who swathed himself in 
measureless claims could implicitly sanction for 



BAHAISM 343 

his own glorification such a perversion of 
history as is given us in the Traveller's Narra- 
tive, 113 or assert for himself a license in respect 
of wives (or concubines) which was disallowed 
to Babis and Bahais in general. In the face 
of all this a few happy ventures in prediction 
cannot carry any appreciable weight. Men of 
discernment do not feel compelled to approve 
the whole program of Savonarola because he 
gave utterance to certain forecasts which were 
followed by apparent fulfillment. Still less 
will they be inclined, on a similar basis, to 
recognize the stamp of a divine sanction on 
the high claims of Baha Ullah. 

Considerations which nullify the influence or 
discredit the claims of Baha Ullah reflect, of 
course, on the vocation of the official upholder 
and propagandist of those claims. There is 
but scanty occasion, therefore, to estimate 
the person or the career of Abdul Baha. The 
most pertinent remark is perhaps that which 
emphasizes the relative ineffectiveness of the 
publicity which he cultivated. Apparently, it 
has not been able to work any better results 
than the seclusion of his father. His suavity, 
running out into an easygoing latitudinarian- 
ism which invited almost every party to 



113 Browne, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1892, 
pp. 306 ? 66£, 



344 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

flatter itself with the assumption that it had 
the essentials of the truth, was not ballasted 
by a sufficient exhibition of depth and energy 
of spirit to make profound or lasting impres- 
sions. His pilgrimage to the West naturally 
elicited considerable attention, but this testi- 
fied rather to curiosity than to real interest. 
His visit won no substantial advance to his 
cause. Indeed, some who had been inclined 
to a favorable judgment were turned by a 
closer acquaintance with the chief exponent of 
Bahaism into indifference or opposition. 

5. The good points in Bahaism are largely 
negatived by association with highflying and 
incredible assumptions of authority. The prop- 
osition as stated implies that commendable 
points are contained in the teaching of Baha- 
ism. This is cordially to be admitted. Baha 
Ullah was sufficiently acquainted with Chris- 
tianity in its oracles and in some of its better 
products in the modern world to be able in 
one respect and another to rise distinctly above 
the ordinary plane of Mohammedanism. His 
theory of government was not illiberal, for 
he found in it a place for republicanism as 
well as for monarchy, and indicated his con- 
viction that an ideal combination of the two 
is possible. In respect of religion, his judg- 
ment that it will be advantaged by restricting 



BAHAISM 345 

to a moderate compass elements of ceremonial- 
ism and sacerdotalism is not ill-grounded and 
accords with the sentiment of a great multi- 
tude of thoughtful Christians. Once more, his 
opposition to the policy of settling disputes 
by appeals to force and his emphasis on the 
establishment of international tribunals to 
take cognizance of matters threatening to rend 
the peace of nations may properly command 
general appreciation. Points like these are to 
be gratefully recognized. They are not, how- 
ever, to be recognized with such a degree of 
acclaim or laudation as to evoke the notion 
that they are new or unprecedented. Bahai 
apologists have sometimes gone astray in this 
direction. They have boasted, for example, 
of Baha Ullah's peace policy and scheme for 
arbitration tribunals, as though he were a 
pioneer in this matter and had brought a 
brand new plan to the attention of Christen- 
dom. The facts are distinctly otherwise. A 
project of federation in the interest of peace 
is as old as the time of Henry IV of France. 
In 1625 Hugo Grotius published his book On 
the Rights of War and of Peace, in which the 
customary readiness of nations to plunge into 
war was strongly denounced, and a noble plea 
was made for arbitration. In the same century 
George Fox was an insistent advocate of a 



346 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

peace policy, and the Society of Friends which 
he founded has ever been devoted to the 
same policy. Toward the end of the eighteenth 
century the philosopher Kant, in his tractate 
on Perpetual Peace, advocated a comprehensive 
scheme of federation for the preservation of 
friendly relations between all peoples. The 
Massachusetts Peace Society was organized in 
1815, and the American Peace Society held 
its first meeting in 1828. An International 
Peace Congress was convened in 1843, and by 
1851 five such congresses had been gathered. 114 
All this development preceded the mission of 
Baha Ullah; and if he did not derive any 
suggestion from it, the explanation does not 
lie in any intrinsic impossibility. 

The above facts are cited simply as a cor- 
rective to intemperate laudation. In itself 
the peace policy of Bahaism, whether original 
or borrowed, is a praiseworthy feature. The 
point of emphasis in the present connection is 
the impotency to which it is condemned. 
On grounds of reason, interest, and human- 
ity the nations may ultimately be constrained 
to substitute the rational appeal to arbitration 
for the irrational resort to violence. But 
they will never do so at the beck of an author- 
ity exalting itself above all principalities and 

m Selected Quotations on Peace and War, 1915, pp. 312-355. 



BAHAISM 347 

powers and claiming unqualified right to direct 
them according to its behests. An inter- 
meddling theocracy set up at Acre, and attempt- 
ing to perpetuate itself through any sort of 
tribunal, must of necessity, through the an- 
tipathy which it could not fail to provoke, 
render the reverse of a true service to any 
great public interest. The element of intoler- 
able pretense would negate the virtue of any 
good intention which might be joined with 
the exorbitant and incredible claims. 

6. The Bahai code must repel, in part by its 
inferior level, and in part by its artificialities. 
In the licensing of bigamy that code adopts 
a point of view which the Christian conscious- 
ness has unequivocally outlawed. The mono- 
gamic ideal which shines out in the Old Testa- 
ment, in spite of the unhappy departures from 
it in practice, the language of Christ relative 
to marriage, and, above all, the necessary 
inductions from the principles of the New 
Testament respecting the intrinsic relations of 
believers, have put the system of a plurality 
of wives under a sentence of irrepealable 
reprobation. Only by an unthinkable lapse 
from decisive habits of thought and feeling 
could Christendom come to tolerate a scheme 
which compels a woman to take up with the 
fraction of a husband. At this point, there- 



348 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

fore, Bahaism has raised an effectual barrier 
against possible advance on any large scale 
within the domain occupied by Christianity. 
Its licensing of bigamy links it with an im- 
perfect past and causes it to face rather toward 
obsolescence than toward increase. A kindred 
remark applies to the law on divorce, previously 
cited from the Kitab-i-Akdas, which treats the 
subject from the standpoint of the husband's 
prerogative, and virtually denies the parity of 
the wife. 

The license for a plurality of wives which 
is given by the Bahai code naturally suggests 
a reference to another feature. In the Kitab-i- 
Akdas a relatively light penalty is attached 
to the crime of adultery. It is made punish- 
able with a fine both for a first and a second 
offense, whereas theft entails successively exile, 
imprisonment, and branding, and arson makes 
liable to burning. 

Both in original Babism and in Bahaism 
there is noticeable a failure to stop with the 
enumeration of principles, and various triv- 
ialities and artificialities are treated as matters 
of religious obligation. The Bab, attaching a 
magic power to names and numbers, assigned 
a great role to talismans. 115 Under the influ- 
ence of the same incentive he undertook to 



11B Gobineau, pp. 336ff. 



BAHAISM S49 

revolutionize the method of reckoning time. 
Recognizing that one of the foremost titles 
of God (wahed) is composed of letters whose 
numerical value amounts to nineteen, he 
ordained that the year should consist of nine- 
teen months, each month of nineteen days, 
each day of nineteen hours, each hour of 
nineteen minutes. Though this scheme was 
so faulty that it became necessary to patch 
out the year by the addition of four or five 
days, it was nevertheless, as has been ob- 
served, given the stamp of authority by Baha 
Ullah. Now, a freak in legislation like this, 
if not extremely significant in itself, has still 
a portentous bearing. Supposing that the 
nations of the earth could be persuaded to 
accept this specific expression of foolish and 
aberrant sovereignty, we cannot rationally be- 
lieve that they would care to submit in general 
to an authority that has demonstrated its 
capability of running to such an excess of 
arbitrariness and artificiality. 

7. The license which Bahaism grants to its 
adherents to march under false banners is far 
from being a recommendation. The motive on 
the part of the Bahais in Persia for dissembling 
their faith is intelligible enough. By outward 
accommodation to the current Mohammedan- 
ism they greatly abridge the liability to be 



350 PANTHEISTIC DILEMMAS 

assailed by violent persecution. The policy 
adopted is not, however, heroic, nor can it 
tend to fashion men imbued with a proper 
sense of the supremacy over heart and con- 
duct which is due to truth. A lowering of 
moral tone in certain directions must naturally 
result. It is not a ground for surprise, there- 
fore, that a resident should render this testi- 
mony respecting the Persian Babis (or Bahais) : 
"Their hospitality, zeal, and earnestness in the 
propagation of their belief are worthy of praise 
and emulation; but their easy dissimulation of 
their faith, even to openly cursing the Babis, 
and the unreliability of their promises are 
discouraging." 116 

Whatever degree of charity may be exer- 
cised toward the dissimulation of the Persian 
Bahais, in consideration of their difficult sit- 
uation, it is not possible to judge mildly of a 
kindred policy in domains where religious 
liberty obtains. The dispensation of Baha 
Ullah claims supereminence over all others. 
It unmistakably relegates Christ to a secondary 
rank, so that no one can consistently figure 
as a Christian who has given his allegiance to 
Bahaism. When, therefore, Abdul Baha ad- 
vised converts to remain in the Christian 



116 J. L. Potter, cited by Speer, Missions and Modern His- 
tory, I, 162. 



BAHAISM 351 

Church and to spread their views there, 117 he 
was encouraging a course which clear-sighted 
moral integrity must reprobate. 

It is not our intention to deny that some 
very worthy maxims and principles have been 
adopted by the responsible exponents of Baha- 
ism. The ground of impeachment of the 
religion bearing that name is the vast disparity 
between its enormous claims and its real 
credentials. The conclusion is unavoidable 
that it has no substantial basis. To suppose 
that it can ever figure as a great world re- 
ligion is to indulge in a gratuitous fancy. 

117 Phelps, Life and Teachings of Abbas Effendi, p. 97. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Abdul Baha (otherwise 

Abbas Effendi), 287ff., 

292f., 296ff., 318ff., 340, 

343f., 350f. 
Absolute, the, 17, 20, 23, 

42f., 57f., 112. 
Absolution, the rite of, 177, 

179. 
Agrippa of Nettesheim, 228. 
Aid to a Grammar of Assent, 

Newman's book, 212ff. 
Aliotta, A., 70, 100. 
Angelus Silesius, 228, 264. 
Anti-sacerdotalism, of the 

Protestant reformers, 174ff. 
Aquinas, Thomas, 162. 
Assurance, doctrine of, 159ff. 
Augustine, 239. 

Babism, 275f., 279, 281, 283, 
295. 

Baha'lJllah, 275, 279, 282ff., 
291ff., 314ff., 336f., 342f., 
349. 

Bahaism, antecedents, 275ff.; 
historical sketch, 280ff . ; 
doctrines, 290ff.; the posi- 
tion accorded to Baha 
Ullah and to Abdul Baha, 
314ff.; barriers in the way 
of any large advance, 320ff . 

Barney, Laura C, 292f., 
297ff., 305f. 

Bawden, H. H., 43, 52, 109. 

Bellarmine, R., 168, 170. 

Bergson, H., 43, 69ff., 109ff. 

Bernard of Clairvaux, 239. 

Berthelot, R., 70. 



Bible, its primacy in the view 
of the Protestant reform- 
ers, 166ff.; Newman's opin- 
ion as respects inerrancy, 
202. 

Billot, L., 168, 179. 

Boehme, J., 228, 247. 

Bonaventura, 267. 

Boniface VIII, 183. 

Bowne, B. P., 29. 

Brahman, 16ff., 24ff., 30f., 
230. 

Brooks, Phillips, 150. 

Browne, E. G., 277, 279f., 
286f., 299, 307f., 315, 317. 

Brownson, O. A., 195. 

Buddhism, 230. 

Caird, J., 22. 
Calvin, J., 160, 182. 
Canus, Melchior, 168. 
Carr, H. W., 69, 82, 91, 110. 
Categories, the, 59, 95. 
Catherine of Genoa, 245. 
Catherine of Siena, 245. 
Chase, T., 305, 319f. 
Coleridge, S. T., 174. 
Cousin, V., 226. 
Cunningham, G. W., 71, 94. 

De Soto, 170. 
Development, doctrinal, as 

construed by Newman, 

193ff., 204ff. 
Dewey, J., 39f., 43, 45ff., 54. 
Dionysius, the Areopagite, 

233, 258, 261. 
Doctrines, rating of, 147ff. 



355 



356 



INDEX 



Dodson, G. R., 72. 
Dreyfus, H., 811, 336. 
Duration, in sense of Berg- 
son, 82ff. 

Eckhart, 240, 259, 261, 263f. 
Edwards, Jonathan, 252f. 
Elliott, H. S. R., 71. 
Emerson, R. W., 256f. 
Erigena, John Scot, 259. 
Evolution, in sense of Berg- 
son, 86ff. 

Fairbairn. A. M., 216. 
Fenelon, F. de la M., 249. 
Fichte, J. G., 255f. 
Fischer, K., 32. 
Flint, R., 139. 
Foster, G. B., 108. 
Fouillee, A. J. E., 70. 
Francis, de Sales, 247f. 
Francis of Assisi, 229. 
Freedom, as construed by 

Bergson, 90, 103. 
Gerrard, T. J., lOlf. 
Gladstone, W. E., 198, 210. 
Gobineau, Le Comte de, 284, 

307, 335, 348. 
God, pantheistic view of, 

13ff.; regarded as limited 

and changing, 55f., 103f., 

107ff. 
Goldziher, I., 330f. 
Green, T. H., 140f. 
Gregory of Nyssa, 228. 
Grimme, H., 327, 329. 
Grotius, Hugo, 345. 
Guyon, Madame, 249f. 

Heraclitus, 41. 
Hermann, E., 72. 
Hibben, J. G., 98. 
Hilton, W., 243. 
Hoffding, H., 107f., 110f., 

117. 
Home, H. H., 63. 
Hume, David, 138ff. 



Illusion, as affirmed by the 
Vedanta philosophy, 17, 
23ff. 

Imamate, 275, 332ff., 338f. 

Indulgences, 158f. 

Inge, W. R., 226. 

Intuition, in sense of Berg- 
son, 74ff., 93ff. 

Isvara, 19. 

Jalaluddin Rumi, 233. 

James, W., 39ff., 70, 72, 109, 
121ff., 142, 215. 

John of the Cross, 246. 

Jones, R. M., 226. 

Juliana of Norwich, 243. 

Justification, the Reforma- 
tion doctrine of, 152ff. 

Kallen, H. M., 74, 92. 
Kant, Immanuel, 346. 
Kheiralla, I. G., 286, 288f., 

296f., 305f., 309, 314f. 
King, H. C, 226. 
Kingsley, C., 227. 
Koran, the, 326ff., 335. 

Ladd, G. T., 71. 

Lao-tse, 231. 

Lasson, A., 226. 

Law, W„ 251. 

Le Roy, E., 69, 89. 

Lehmann, E., 226. 

Leo XIII., 168, 184, 192f., 

211. 
Liberatore, M., 184. 
Lindsay, A. D., 82. 
Luther, Martin, 152ff., 238. 
Macdonald, D. B., 326. 
Mach, E., 121, 130ff. 
Malou, J. B., 170. 
Manning, H. E., 184, 189. 
Maritain, J., 92. 
Mary, the Virgin, 194, 196, 

200, 205f. 
Matter, in sense of Bergson, 

88ff., lOlf. 



INDEX 



357 



Maya, 17, 30. 

Metaphysics, rating of, 41, 
48, 51, 121. 

Mill, J. S., 141. 

Mirza Ali Mohammed, the 
Bab, 278, 280ff., 286f., 300, 
314, 335, 341, 348f. 

Modernism, 201, 218f. 

Mohammed, judged by his 
record, 324ff. 

Mohammedanism, the Bahai 
claims for it tested, 325ff. 

Molinos, M., 248. 

Moore, A. W., 47ff. 

More, H., 250. 

Miinsterberg, H., 63. 

Mysticism, scope of the term, 
223f.; various definitions, 
224ff.; the type concerned 
with nature, 227ff.; the 
type concerned with inner 
experience, 230ff.; grounds 
for appreciation, 234ff . ; 
prominent Christian repre- 
sentatives, 238ff. ; exposures 
to error, 257ff. 

Neo-Platonism, 232f., 258. 
Nettleship, R. L., 227. 
Newman, J. H., 189ff. 
Nicolas, A. L. M., 300, 310, 
314. 

Oecolampadius, J., 182. 
Orphists, the, 232. 
Overton, J. H., 226. 

Palmer, G. H., 143. 
Pantheism, 13ff., 234, 256, 

262ff., 293f. 
Paracelsus, T., 228. 
Patmore, C, 226. 
Perrone, J., 170, 194. 
Pfleiderer, O., 226. 
Phelps, M., 284, 293f., 307, 

351. 
Phillips, G., 183. 



Pierce, C. S., 39. 
Pius IX., 184, 198. 
Pius X., 212, 218. 
Plato, 41, 232. 
Plotinus, 232f., 258, 268. 
Powell, E. E., 20, 22. 
Pragmatism, 39ff. 
Pratt, J. B., 226. 
Proclus, 233. 
Protagoras, 41. 
Purcell, E. S., 183f., 189. 

Quesnel, Pasquier, 172. 

Rageot, G., 70. 

Ranke, L. von, 183. 

Recejac, E., 226. 

Reformation, the, its con- 
tributions, 147ff. 

Remey, C. M., 300, 301f., 
315, 318f. 

Richard of St. Victor, 266. 

Roberts, B. H., 56. 

Roemer, H., 280. 

Roman Catholicism, its doc- 
trine relative to justifica- 
tion, 157ff.; to assurance, 
161ff.; to the function of 
the Bible, 169ff.; to priestly 
prerogatives, 179f., 183ff. 

Ross, E. D., 284, 303. 

Royce, J., 71. 

Ruysbroeck, J., 243, 259, 261, 
264. 

Sacraments, theory of the, 

177ff. 
Saint- Martin, L. C. de, 229. 
Sankara, 15ff., 23ff. 
Santayana, G., 71, 80. 
Scheeben, M. J., 168, 172. 
Schelling, F. W. J., 229. 
Schiller, F. C. S., 39ff. 
Sell, E., 298. 
Seth, A., 140. 
Shastri, Prahu Dutt, 17f. 
Shiites, the, 275ff„ 281. 



358 



INDEX 



Smith, John, 227,250f. 
Soul, the, Bergson's view, 88; 

proper conception of it as a 

unitary psychical agent, 

121ff. 
Speer, R. E., 306f., 350. 
Spencer, H., 107, 141. 
Spinoza, B., 15, 19ff., 26ff., 32f . 
Stewart, J. McK., 70, 79, 

84, 97, 100. 
Subh-i-Azal, 282ff. 
Sufism, 233, 279. 
Sunnites, the, 275f. 
Suso, H., 263. 

Tauler, J., 238, 241, 259, 

261, 263f. 
Teresa, 246, 261, 267. 
Theologia Germanica, 238, 

242, 259. 
Theosophy, 224. 
Thomas a Kempis, 244. 
Tyrrell, G., 219. 



Underhill, E., 226. 

Vatican Council, 198ff. 
Vatralsky, S. K., 323. 
Vedanta philosophy, 15, 22 

30. 
Vivekananda, 17f., 30f. 

Wace, H., 159f. 

Ward, W., 189ff. 

Ward, W. G., 189. 

Weigel, V., 228. 

Wesley, J., 161, 254f. 

Wessel, J., 238. 

Whichcote, B., 250. 

Wilbois, J., 69. 

Wilm, E. C., 98. 

Wilson, S. G., 286, 289f. 

308f., 311, 315, 340. 
Wordsworth, W., 229. 

Zwingli, U., 176, 178. 



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